Yellowstone Pics Of The Day: Days 6 & 7

I have never yet been on a permanent vacation, have you? If you have, my guess is that you are retired, and that really doesn't count as a vacation per se. It's more of a life phase--a life phase I wouldn't mind experiencing for myself one day, but not just yet. I'm not mature enough to handle non-stop self-determination. I need obligations in life to get me out of bed in the morning. I need responsibilities to motivate me to accomplish something. What makes vacations and holidays special is that they are fleeting and rare, and a break from the routine, and thus precious.

That being said, I am never ready to leave Yellowstone. I have never gotten my fill of its beauty (see Day 5 for my favorite pics of the park in its splendor), and I am completely serious when I say I could happily live there. I'm not saying that hiking in the back country could, all on its own, serve as an entirely sufficient motive for getting me out of bed every day for the rest of my life, but it comes pretty darned close. We have barely scratched the surface of a very diverse and mysterious place, and even at that have only been there at summer's beginning, never in the autumn or winter. Yellowstone in winter is definitely on the bucket list!

Alas, for now, our exploration of Yellowstone is coming to an end. I have one more set of photos to share with you, and then journey home we must. (We came home through the Grand Tetons, so I still have a few pics up my sleeve, but these are the last Yellowstone images I'll be sharing with you this trip.)

The last couple of days before the drive home were a jumble of places and activities. The first one was the 4th of July, and West Yellowstone, where we camped during our stay, is the perfect place to experience Independence Day in small town America, complete with parade and fireworks. The parade is just what you'd expect, with firetrucks, and horses, and candy for the kids. The fireworks display this little town puts on is amazing. Ked and I had seen it before, and had talked it up to our friends Scott and Mary so much that they were prepared to be disappointed. They were disappointed in that expectation of disappointment!! It was wonderful and satisfying. Every time you thought they must be throwing the big finale it turned out they were just getting started. (Well, okay, not every time. Clearly the show peaked eventually, but it didn't happen till we were perfectly ready.) The rest of the day was spent in bike rides and scooter races, souvenir shopping, and some yummy home cooking, and the day after that was an exploration of Mammoth Hot Springs and its environs. Stick around and I'll give you a taste of everything but the food... (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)




Scott looks like he's winning here, but never underestimate the power of a determined Mary!

Keep that helmet on, Girlie!! Safety first! Oh, and you in the back there--watch where you're going! That bike looks fast!

Speaking of fast bikes, there was a herd of them when we got to Mammoth. We got to talk to this Harley crew for a while. Really nice people who answered a burning question that Ked and I have wondered about for a very long time. What is the deal with those really long handles that some people have on their bikes? They look so uncomfortable, making riders keeps their arms way up high for the duration of their ride. They must be torture on long hauls. Wanna know what they told us? "Too much testosterone."

Doesn't Mary look pretty here, getting ready to hike up one last Yellowstone hill at Mammoth Hot Springs? Since this was our last day, we were determined to make the most of it, and tackle the climb cheerfully.

Ben looks pretty self-satisfied after the first part of the climb.

Part way up, we stopped to look back at the town below. There were lots of government offices and residences down there, some of them very old. We were surprised to see some not-so-old domiciles a little ways out of town, too, looking more like a suburb than a part of history, but rangers must live somewhere, mustn't they, and some of them (gasp!) actually have families. We were told that this little neighborhood was for the higher-up permanent residents, and that the summer crew lived in apartments and trailer parks tucked here and there throughout the park.

We were climbing the path, so why not climb a tree? (Actually, I think Mom or Dad set the boy up there, since the tree base was off the trail, and a definite no-no for safety reasons. This limb, though, was hanging over the path, so we reckoned this made it in bounds.

Emma got her shot at the almost-forbidden fruit as well.

Now there's a tree I wouldn't want to climb, although the scene is really lovely in its desolation. There's not much left alive up toward the top of these hot springs. Even the algae that you see so many places around Yellowstone is notably missing. It's a beautiful, dead world up there.

Oh wait! There's something that managed to survive. It's got a really cheesy grin, though. Looks like a few hardy trees hung in there, too.

After we saw all we wanted to at the springs, we headed into town to have a look around. There were some interesting old buildings. I loved how the traditional lion statues are replaced here in Yellowstone with far more suitable bears.

Our walk took us here to the Horace M. Albright Visitor Center. There were some nice displays inside to teach us about the history of Mammoth and Yellowstone, and Ked and I got our museum fix for the day. Our friends, though, had an extra important reason for heading inside. They had serious business to take care of...

Ben and Emma had worked all week to complete a very important mission, fulfilling the strict National Park standards of study and achievement to take their place among the ranks of Junior Park Rangers! Here you see them "Taking the Oath" to preserve and protect our natural treasures. Yogi would be so proud.

What can I say about this picture? I wonder if "two heads are better than one" would merely elicit groans, or if it would send you out of here in disgust. Hmmm... it's probably a close call. I came close to bailing myself at my lack of captioning shame. However, since I can't come up with anything that's actually clever to say, and since I want to post the picture anyway, I'll have to take my chances with your indulgence. You can give the post a poor rating down at the bottom if you feel the need to protest.

With our important civic duties behind us, we wandered out again to see the local wildlife. We didn't have to look far, because this young buck was stopping traffic right outside the visitor's center door.

Notice that park ranger keeping a watch over the scene? We talked to her later, and she said that's how she ends up spending a lot of her time. It's her job to keep an eye on the animals in town and make sure there aren't any "close encounters." Honestly, her job can't be easy, because, not only do you have an abundance of animal life wandering through the village, but you have lots, and lots, of the following...

People. Not the brightest people, either. We must have seen her talk to more than a dozen would-be-patients-in-the-making, who seemed to think that Yellowstone is Disneyland, and that nothing there will really hurt you, no matter how close you get. Seriously, it's like they think that elk is tame, and if they talk sweetly to him, he will let them pet him--or at least get that once-in-a-lifetime photo. They aren't thinking about the fact he weighs several hundred pounds, and his hooves are designed to fight off predators. They just want a pretty slide show when this trip is over. Now, the people above are crazy enough, but at least they can try to close the door and hit the gas if elk-boy here decides he doesn't like the way they're looking at him. Others we saw weren't even that cautious.

This photo is deceptive, since we were walking by under ranger supervision, and there was a truck between Ked and the elk, but even this made us rather nervous. The ranger told us some stories about park visitors getting stomped quite recently due to over-confidence, and we definitely wanted to keep our distance--even then, we were tempted by the photo-op. Human nature just wants to push the boundaries, doesn't it?

See what I mean? This girl actually walked up and turned her back on the animals so her friends could get a better shot. What were they thinking?!

It's not like there weren't any warnings anywhere, either--not to mention the ranger (who had to come up and tell this girl to get the heck away from the aforementioned dangerous wild animals.) Sheesh, people, get a clue! Not tame!

Okay, moving off of the lecture circuit, I now take you to a sweet family scene for your edification. At least I would take you to a sweet family scene, if Scott had not deliberately tried to thwart my shot by, shall we say, less than sweet family behavior. (Oh, go ahead and click on it. You'll see what I mean.) Not sure if he thought I would post this picture, but if he didn't, he now knows never to give me an opportunity like this if he doesn't want me to take advantage of it. I'm just not that tame, either, I guess.

Here's a caption for you "I Can Haz Cheeseburger?" fans:

Sucker: Ur doin it wrong.

Walking around town, it was clear it was 4th of July weekend. There were flags everywhere, private residences especially. (Yes, this is a private home.)

Some of these homes were so picturesque that it was hard to believe they weren't a Disney-type set. Maybe that's what got the tourists thinking that the animals should be tame...

Once we wandered around back of the main street, it became obvious that people with real lives did live here. Cars and canoes and satellite dishes. Yep. We're still in modern-day America.

Awww, now there's that sweet family photo I was looking for. Lovely old church, too. We saw a few more sights in town, and the decided to head out and squeeze in one more adventure. The hike we originally planned was cancelled due to nature, but Scott picked the brain of a local and off we headed to see one more lake.

Here it is. This is the only photo you will see of it, however, because this lake was a turn-on-your-heals-and-get-out-of-here kind of location. Why, you ask? Bloodsuckers. The mosquitoes knew this was our last day, and they were determined to give us a fine send-off. Stinking mosquitoes. Note that Scott has a mosquito-repellent wipe in his hand, and another on his hat, and still the nasty creatures came at him (and everyone else but me) in droves. The buzzing alone was enough to send me packing, and I wasn't even on the menu.

And here it ends. We saved this picture all week so that we could take it on our last night. I will confess that we headed into Yellowstone one more time, driving south on our way back to Portland, but this was our last day with any opportunity to explore. The adventure is not quite over. Come back again to see our driving tour through the Tetons on the homeward journey. I never knew they were so amazing. They are worth a trip all on their own. Maybe someday...

Yellowstone Pics Of The Day: Days 4 & 5

Days 4 and 5 were filled with bike riding and kite flying, scooters, books, and exploring the town of West Yellowstone, good food, great company, and a wonderful back-country hike. I'll get straight to the pictures, because there are lots of them (almost all of them from that splendid hike.) Click on 'em if you want to see them biggified.

This wood and stone edifice is an old Union Pacific Dining Hall, in West Yellowstone, currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This lodge, designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood to accommodate railroad passengers, was finished in 1926, and was intended to mimic national park architecture. Looks like a pretty successful attempt to me.

Note the use of native materials.

All this examination of dining halls made Ked hungry, so soon after our inspection we headed back to camp!

On the way back to the trailer we passed by this man-made horizontal waterfall. We talked to a maintenance worker who told us that the region around West Yellowstone had so much snow last winter, and so much rain last spring, that the town's water supply was full to overflowing--about six months worth behind schedule in water usage! When Ked and I wandered by they were purging some of it off. There was an awful lot of force behind that temporary fountain. They put that bucket there to keep the water from shooting way off down the street and hindering traffic. (Such traffic as there was, anyway.)

At some point the whole gang piled in the car and went out looking for adventure. We started our quest in the Canyon Visitor Education Center, where we learned all about the geology of Yellowstone. Interactive topographical maps like the one above are just one of the cool things about this new visitors' center in the park, and all four adults, and even the kids, enjoyed our exploration of this cornucopia of knowledge and information. As you can see, Scott, being a teacher, took full advantage of the opportunity to give his daughter a science lesson or two.

Emma found the science very interesting, I'm sure, but seemed a lot more enthusiastic about "hugging" a bear, if truth be told!

After our morning spent inside the halls of learning, we were all happy to hit the trails in the afternoon. On this day, our wanderings took us to the Upper and Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Ben got a thrill or two when Scott held him out over the canyon for a better look at the view that most of us could see just by leaning out a bit. The Boy was a little lacking in height, so Dad helped him out.

Here's what he saw.

A little later in the day, we crossed this bridge to the other side of the canyon for a ranger-led hike and some truly impressive water. In case you missed it, those little blue and yellow specks on the right side of the photo are people! (Click on this one if you need proof!)

Backing out a bit puts this view into perspective. The people are still there, but the water looks a whole lot bigger when you can see how far those falls tumble. It really is a magnificent sight--one of many on the Canyon hike we experienced that day.

Our guide was interesting (if a little too enamored of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming), and we learned a lot about varieties of trees and lichen, among other things. It was pretty fun that she picked Ben as a helper, and even more so when, taking his duties very seriously, he explained to us that he needed to stay with her because she was his assistant!!

I mentioned in an earlier post that we had lots of thunderstorms while we were in Yellowstone, and the day we explored the canyon had its share of lightning. In fact, the lightning got close enough that our guide bailed on us! The ranger did not want to continue up the trail and approach this metal fence (which we thought was a little silly, because the storm never did get that close), so we few intrepid souls travelled on without her. Scott knew of a back-country trail we wanted to take later on, and turning back would mean we didn't get there, so off we went. A stranger was kind enough to snap this photo. I post it, despite the glare and blur, not as proof that we were more brave (or more foolhardy) than a forest ranger, but because I think it might be the only picture we got of all six of us together the entire trip! Proof that we were at Yellowstone with our very dear friends--that alone makes it worth posting!

Further up the trail we came to another massive plunging torrent of water. I think this is the lower falls, but I'm not sure. Again, there are little, tiny people there for scale.

Here's a nice one of Scott and Mary, don't you think? If you look closely, you can see those little people behind them.

As we followed the path, we saw how this canyon is still changing shape. I would recommend to any squirrels that live in this tree that they might want to pick another home. After all, there's plenty of nice real estate in Yellowstone!

Of course, that particular tree does have an awfully nice view!

Continuing up the path, we found that others were more than happy to brave the weather. We reached a popular viewpoint (with a parking lot close by) that proved to be quite crowded.

You can understand why the crowd gathered when you see the view. Remember where those little people were behind Scott and Mary? They're looking a bit microscopic in this one.

Okay, now for the really backed out view. No way you'd even know those little people exist now, is there? It kind of gives you a feel for how big this canyon really is.

This is about the time we headed off the main trail for a trek through the undiscovered country. Okay, okay, clearly it's not undiscovered, but we were completely on our own from the minute we took the road less travelled. It was great!! Scott scoped out the whole hike before we went exploring, so we felt perfectly safe (Scott's bear bell helped with that part), but we did feel wonderfully adventurous in breaking with the crowd.

Here's our last view of the river.

We did find more water on the journey. This charming spot is called something like Lily Lake. I don't really remember, because its rightful name is Mosquito Central. Ked did an amazing job of looking calm for this picture (which I should never have begged him to pose for), because he was being eaten alive at the time. I'm glad it turned out to be a nice picture of him--I definitely only got one shot at it.

You can see that getting away from the canyon took us into some rather desolate country. It never ceases to amaze me how you can walk a trail in Yellowstone and find both sulfurous wasteland and thriving forest right next to each other. So, so very cool.

Hey! We got to see clear evidence of why they call it Yellow Stone!

What's this, you may ask? Why post this one? Ked is filming, and Scott is directing traffic, and there's really nothing to see in this shot, right? So why put it out there for public consumption? Well, you see that bubbling pot of mud in the background? Do you notice what's missing? There's no fence!! There is no barrier to keep us safe from our own stupidity! It was very liberating--at least adult-wise it was liberating. We did have to stop Ben from running headlong in the wrong direction occasionally, but he managed to come out of there alive, and it was totally worth it to feel we were really out there in the wild. Loved it.

One thing that was definitely not missing--the smell! That sulfur packs a wallop. However, to its credit, it's also rather good at keeping the mosquitoes at bay. So we had that going for us, which was nice.

Being on our own, there was no one to stop us from doing dangerous science experiments, like seeing what we could find if we went fishing in this mud pot.

What do you think? I'd call that some lovely goop from the gloppetta-gloppetta machine!

Occasionally we found our journey taking us back to the land of water, where we saw lovely views like this one. Evening was fast approaching at this point, and we needed to pick up the pace (after the photo, of course.) This lake had the obligatory mosquito infestation (especially since night was coming on), but here the sky was filled with swallows who seemed to find the insects a very satisfactory evening meal. They don't show up in this picture, but they made a pretty sight swooping about below that bank of clouds.

Hooray for cameras that compensate for fading light! This was the part of the hike where we were most grateful for that bear bell. The light really started to dim, and we knew that the evening is when the bears come out to play, so we were getting a bit nervous. Scott insisted on walking in the front, so that he would be the first target spotted if we encountered wildlife. The rest of us played our part in ensuring that he wouldn't have to sacrifice himself for the greater good, though. Ked and I, especially, sang at the top of our lungs, so that the bears would know we were coming and make tracks. The wind was howling around us, too, and Ked and I found it lots of fun to sing "They call the wind Mariah" in keeping with the weather. "Oklahoma" made its way onto the program, too, although that one was a little problematic, since we were in Wyoming at the time. Oh well. It kept the bears away, in any case. Really, though, it turned out that it wasn't bears we had to worry about. Something far more menacing waited on the trail ahead. Be prepared. It's pretty frightening. It was...

Zombie Deer!!!

And with that, I will leave you to return to your own world. Hope you had a little fun in mine.

Movie Minute

Saw the new Bruce Willis sci fi flick Surrogates last night. Man, I love his taste in science fiction! Shades of Asimov in this one, with just a little Matrix thrown in to boost the quality of the tech. I love sci fi that looks at the question, "If we can, does that mean we should?" (This is a good time to go watch the trailer, linked above, and then come back.) I walked away from this movie totally understanding how humanity could go where the story takes them. For my own reasons, there are times I would love to be able to plug in to a surrogate and use it to take me out into the world, from which I often must keep myself isolated, and can only imagine what a blessing such technology would be to the wheelchair-bound, or bed-ridden. However, I also believe that the film is quite accurate about where such things could lead. Where is that, you ask? Well, for that you'll have to watch the movie, which I recommend you do.

You'll recognize Bruce Willis. He's the pretty little surrey with the fringe on the top.

Yellowstone Pics Of The Day: Days 2 & 3

Day two of our trip to Yellowstone did not go as planned. Day two was supposed to be a leisurely exploration of mountain passes and valleys full of bears, with maybe a moose sighting or two thrown in for good measure. Day two was supposed to be picnics, and wildflowers, and old western lodges, fine dining, good wine, and lots of pictures of happy friends. Day two was not supposed to be what we came to affectionately call The Plague Day--as in the ten plagues of Egypt from the Biblical story of Moses. Day two was not supposed to be headaches, and infestations of ants, and upset tummies, and skinned knees, and temper tantrums, and road construction, and detours, and mosquitoes, and car-sickness, and a very, very late night. “Supposed to” doesn’t count for much in real life, though, and, unless you have some secret key to controlling time and space of which I am not aware, you have to let days like Day 2 happen how they will. Fighting a force as strong as the ten plagues is pointless—even Pharaoh couldn’t do it—so you might as well give in with a good grace and find what pleasure you can in wherever the day takes you. Even the best adventures tend to have some trials. The key to enjoying any vacation is holding onto your agenda with a very loose grip, flexing when flexing is called for, and looking for the bright spots in those unexpected detours that send you off where you hadn't planned on going. Such is the lesson of Day 2.

In some ways, Day 2 was a timely rest. We had been driving for days, both getting to the park, and exploring on our first day, and everyone was a bit road-weary. When I woke up that morning with a nausea-inducing migraine, I don't think anyone really objected to hanging around the RV park until my head started improving, sometime mid-afternoon. The kids got to ride their bikes and meet some new friends in camp, Scott got to do some homework, Ked and Mary both got to read The Shack a bit, and I got to curl up in blessed stillness until the waves of pain passed.

It was good for the grownups to slow down, and it was equally good for the kids to speed up--burning off some of the pent-up energy that had been building during our long days of travel. Some of that energy was a bit explosive, resulting in the temper tantrums and skinned knees which comprised part of our list of plagues, but these were nothing that couldn't be handled by amazingly calm parents and a few more spins around our camp on bikes and scooters. It's funny how kids whose bloody knees seem to be causing them real pain can instantly decide that scooters hold more appeal than parental sympathy, and go scampering off to find the next bump in the road, but some kids are tough that way, aren't they? They bounce.

Everybody had a nice pastrami and peanut butter sandwich lunch (separate the pastrami and peanut butter, if you would, please), and, if you ignored the ants crawling around on people's toothbrushes in the bathroom, things were starting to look up a bit.

Eventually, I was able to emerge from my cocoon, and the group of us prepared to go salvage part of our plan for the day. So, we drove into Yellowstone Park, later than expected, but still thinking that we had a good chunk of time to play with, since this was the end of June and the days were long. We made note of the time our road would be closing for construction--10 pm--and knew that we had plenty of time to find Lamar Valley, and hopefully those bears we wanted to see. It was important that we not miss the road-closure deadline, since not getting there before the road crews got going for the night meant a three-hour detour around the southern loop of the park--not something which was even conceivable considering that we had already had a rocky start to the day. The Lamar Valley is on the opposite side of Yellowstone Park from West Yellowstone (the town where we camped), and a long drive on a good day, so this was the one time we planned on eating dinner in the park. Bears often come out at dusk, and since Roosevelt Lodge is near the Lamar Valley, we figured we had a good chance of squeezing both dinner and bear-watching into the evening, before the road closed and we had to take the three-hour detour which would be our only option for getting to bed that night.

We crossed the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, stopping to snap a few quick photos, and proceeded on to Roosevelt Lodge. The wait for dinner was a little longer than we would have liked, but it gave Ked and me a chance to wander around the cabins a bit, and our friends a chance to wander around the gift shop. Eventually our buzzer summoned us to our meal, and we entered the charming, if rather unnaturally loud dining room. (Lots of wood everywhere made for some serious noise amplification, and conversation was something of a challenge.) I had a hard time getting our waiter to understand my inability to eat wheat (don't know if he couldn't hear me, or just couldn't fathom the notion), but the time came when we all found ourselves sharing a lovely meal of western barbecue together.

I'll boast a bit and say that Ked's grilling kicks on anything Roosevelt Lodge serves up, but by not-from-Kedley standards, it was delicious. The noise was a problem though, more so because the plagues were back, and what had begun as a small nagging headache for Ked became a pull-over-to-the-side-of-the-road-I've-got-to-throw-up-some-barbecue kind of trauma. We almost headed for home at this point, but Ked said that he could handle the headache, and we drove into Lamar Valley, hoping the bears would make it all worth Ked's pain. We did see a grizzly, too far in the distance to see without a telephoto lens, and then eventually hit the jackpot--a black bear ambling among the brush, looking for his dinner. Ked, still in too much pain to function, handed me the video camera and sent me out to capture the event for him to see later. We all piled out of the car, even Ked, braving the rising cloud of mosquitoes (the daily plague of our Yellowstone vacation), and oohed and aahed at the reason we all were there. We got to see a bear!! I have no pictures to show you, since I was on video duty, but will you take my word for it? I'm too lazy to go dig a still shot up out of the video footage right now, but I promise you it did happen.

By this point, it was pretty clear we needed to get Ked home. We had gotten some headache medicine at the Lodge, but it had not yet kicked in, and he was suffering dreadfully, so Scott took the wheel and we started the long drive back. It was at this point that we realized that we would be cutting it close for making the lock-down time, but we knew how long it had taken to get where we were, and we still had a few minutes to spare to make the deadline. Little Emma and I swallowed our rising car-sickness, and off we went, taking the curves of the canyon at a faster-than-comfortable clip, but determined not to hinder our necessary progress. We were doing okay, queasy, but stable, and then it happened. Scott caught a glimpse of a magnificent elk on the side of the road--and I do mean magnificent. It was a seven point buck, and close enough to make you nervous. It was starting to get dark in earnest, so it was amazing that Scott saw him at all, but in the end there he was. I'd call him the sight of the day, probably even better than the bear. He was majestic. He was exciting. He was impressive enough to get Ked out of the car, and behind the video camera again, his headache responding slightly to the impact of an Advil/Tylenol cocktail. We gave that buck exactly four-and-a-half minutes before the pressures of time dragged us all back to the car to try to make up lost time, with Scott's foot pressed a little harder on the gas pedal.

It is disconcerting driving in the dark in Yellowstone. There aren't any street lights to guide you on your way, and you know the animals come out to play at night, so you just can't drive too fast with safety. Our trip that night was a combination of fear that we would miss our deadline, and fear that we wouldn't miss a buffalo. Fortunately, we didn't hit any animals. Unfortunately, we didn't hit our appointed time, either. We pulled up to the gate at 10:04, and the none-too-pleased policeman did not bat an eyelash when he turned us back to face the long drive around the southern loop. Our four-and-a-half minute elk stop had become a three-hour tour. Shades of Gilligan's Island rose up around us.

Our situation continued to deteriorate. Scott was able to slow the pace of the car, since we no longer had a time to beat, but it was too late to stop the effect of our previous zippy return through the mountain pass. Emma, sitting in the back seat, mildly mentioning that she didn't feel well, was reintroduced to her dinner, as was the back of the car. Our detour now included a stop to clean up the child, and the vehicle. Mary wrapped everything she could that had been fouled into a plastic tablecloth, made sure Emma was feeling better after the purge, traded places so Em wouldn't be subjected to the back-seat-effect anymore, and we set off again--the good thing being that Emma's stomach was growing calmer, and Ked's head had, for the most part, stopped throbbing. Ked was well enough recovered to be riding in the second row of seats at this point. He wanted to watch Ratatouille, and I was quite thankful for a chance to sit in the front seat after all the twisty roads. I did not want to follow the example of Emma's rebellious tummy.

In keeping with the theme of Gilligan's ill-fated excursion, the weather around us started getting rough. (There were thunderstorms almost every day we were at Yellowstone.) By the time we were an hour into our detour, we were completely surrounded by storm activity, flashes going off everywhere. You never knew which side would bring the next bolt of lightning. We drove along in the darkness, the night broken only by these shining moments, which disappeared as quickly as they came. I mention this now, not as one of the plagues, because to me, this light show was not a bug, but a feature. I love lightening and thunder, and as we drove down past a blank Grand Canyon, an invisible Yellowstone Lake, and a shrouded Old Faithful, the storm gave what would have been a thoroughly frustrating drive (okay, it still was frustrating) a few of those bright spots in the unexpected detours that I was talking about at the beginning of this long tale.

As we drove, Mary read her book, Ked watched his movie, and the kids eventually demonstrated that uncanny knack that all children seem to have of being able to sleep anywhere. Scott and I got a front row view of the sky show, and remembered that, despite all the mishaps, we had done some pretty cool things on Plague Day. We had seen some glorious scenery. We had eaten a fine meal. We had seen bears, and a magnificent elk. We had a fireworks display, provided by God, days before the Fourth of July shows would arrive. Headaches had passed. Nausea had passed, and this long detour, too, would pass--and tomorrow was another day--another vacation day to boot. Not too bad for a plague day.

"Tomorrow" was also Ben's birthday, and the day we visited Old Faithful. I'll tell you about it when you look at the pictures. Day 2 didn't have many photos attached, for obvious reasons, and Day 3 has plenty of pictures, but a little less story, so I'm telling what there is to tell in the captions and combining the days into one somewhat over-long post. Feel free to process this in chunks and come back later to finish. I wrote it that way, so you can certainly read it that way! If you want to see any of the pictures in full-screen form, you can click on them to enlarge, as always.

Here is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The canyon is hundreds of feet deep, and contains some glorious falls. This was our only look for the day, but another post, I'll show you some more of the pretty.

Here is Scott, demonstrating the meaning of "Do as I say, not as I do" to his children, as he stands on the stone wall that is the only barrier between the highway and a deadly plunge. I admit to being a bit more sensitive to this now than I was at the time. After a bad fall recently myself, my "dangerous adventure" chops are sadly wanting--even if it's someone else's danger! At this point I think I wouldn't want to look, but back on the day Scott scaled this wall, my reaction was, "You're nuts--Let me get the camera!"

Here's Ked at Roosevelt Lodge, feeling a little off, but not yet showing the signs to the rest of us.

Here is the Lamar Valley, a pretty place whether you're seeing bears or not.

More Lamar Valley, as the sun goes down.

This is a terrible picture of our magnificent elk. The video is much better. (Ked's video camera takes very good night shots.) I did run the picture through Photoshop to lighten it enough so that you can see his antlers. I don't think you can count all seven points in this photo, but you get the general impression, I'm sure. Would I say this was worth the extra three hours of driving? Not the photo, no, but the experience? Definitely yes.

Well, that's the end of my Day 2 pictures. See why I combined them with Day 3? As I told you already, Day 3 was Ben's birthday, so we adults again gave the kids a play day in camp. They rode bikes, played with friends and cavorted at will. Adults rested, did laundry, homework and cooked a nice meal. Ked got to prove his superiority at the grill, and then we made a birthday trek to Dairy Queen, where most of us indulged in some ice cream. (Poor Scott opted for coffee, which would have been fine, except for the fact that the server accidentally put in salt instead of sugar. I can only imagine what that first sip tasted like.) Later we headed to the icon of Yellowstone, Old Faithful. It was a lovely day, enhanced by the fact that we had managed to get through the previous day and all still remain friends! Day 3 was cake after that--birthday cake, to be exact!

Mmmm.... steak...

We made some friends at DQ. This dog was adorable. and had apparently earned the treat of it's very own ice cream cone. Gosh, lucky dog--even Ked and I shared!

I know doggie enjoyed the cone, but I don't think more than Ben did, judging by the look, and the ice cream, on his face! The cutie behind him was part of a family that very kindly joined us in celebrating Ben's turning 5. They'd never seen us before, but invited us to join them, sang happy birthday with us and approved of Ben's presents as he opened them. Nice people.

We made it to Old Faithful Lodge just as its namesake filled the air with an explosion of water, which was very cool. Besides being what we were there to see, it saved us a long wait for the big event. Afterward, we were free to pursue other interests, which for Scott and Mary meant a quest for coffee, kids in tow for bathroom privileges, and for Ked and me meant a chance to snap a few photographs.

When our friends returned we walked the trail around the geyser field that sits in back of the lodge. There's lots to see there, and many active geysers. One interesting feature is the way some of that hot water runs into cold streams. Must make for some pretty confused fish!

We got pretty excited at all the natural fountains. I can't tell here whether Mary's telling us to hurry to see the explosion, or to run for our lives, but either way, she's excited!

Here is Emma, trying to get her dad to smile.

Here she is succeeding.

On this beautiful, sunny day, we were suddenly confronted with the threat of rain. Remember those thunderstorms I told you about? We did get dampened a bit, but nothing too terrible. The clouds sure looked mean, though.

Ked and Ben didn't let the threat of rain dampen their spirits. They look almost as bubbly as that geyser behind them.

Caffeine in hand, Scott and Mary are ready to face anything.

The clouds made Morning Glory a little less glorious than the last time we were at Yellowstone. The colors were muted, but still pretty, and I like the look of the glowing steam coming off the water.

After dodging the rain, we came back for one more viewing of Old Faithful. It worked out pretty perfectly. Not much waiting at either end of our walk.

Old Faithful Lodge has some lovely details to its design. I'd love to go back and stay longer, maybe in winter when the lodge is surrounded by snow, and you have to come into the park by snow-cat. Geysers in the snow would be very cool--worth learning to cross country ski, just to make the most of that vacation.

As the day wound down, we were treated to a lovely sunset.

Here's an appropriate place to say goodnight.

Yellowstone Pics Of The Day: Day 1

Into the park we go!! We arrived in West Yellowstone after a two-and-a-half day journey, raring to go, and ready for fun and adventure. Days of driving, sleeping in rest stops, less-than-adequate coffee, and the challenge of finding gasoline in rural Idaho (towing a trailer requires more fuel than I'd care to admit in this Carbonly Correct day and age), had made us more than ready to reach our destination. Hurray! We set up camp the night before, and when morning came we were finally set to head into the wild and... do some more driving! Yellowstone National Park is big, and to get to the places you want to see, you have to cover an awful lot of ground. Fortunately, not having to tow the trailer anymore made for quicker travel, and since everywhere we drove there was something lovely to see, we all found ourselves peering out the windows in cheerful anticipation of the sights and sounds of America's very first national park. Everybody--eyes peeled--who's going to see the first buffalo?!

As an aside, I find the less-than-adequate coffee thing rather amusing. I have never liked coffee, never wanted to for that matter, but my friend Mary has gotten me to try sips of her concoctions over the last year or so, and taught me how good really good coffee can be, when adequately made to taste like coffee ice cream, and in doing so, she got me coffee-inclined. After drinking her coffee all through our trip to Jellystone, she's got me hooked. It can't be just any coffee, mind you. It's got to be GOOD coffee. That's what I find amusing. I've gone from non-coffee drinker to coffee snob in one fell swoop. I'm goofy that way.

Off we set--four adults, two kids, and numerous snack foods--with anticipation in our hearts. Whatever we saw was going to be new, and when vacationing, new is almost always interesting and fun. (We'll skip thinking about new ways to lose your luggage, new ways to get dysentery, new kinds of rashes, and similar vacation-related horror stories. I'm still recovering from my recent fall down the stairs, and I'd like to keep this cheerful, okay?) What follow are some of the sights, and some of the memories of that first day. I hope you enjoy them. (Click to enlarge.)




Here it is, our very first elk, one of a pair that wandered close to the road as we made our first explorations. We did what all visitors do when they first arrive at Yellowstone; we stopped and made a huge fuss over seeing a couple of large mammals that were unintimidated and unthreatened by the throng of people who gathered to celebrate the magnificence of their elkly existence. "Look, look!! Elk!!" They weren't running away, but placidly munching the grass and wandering closer to the gawking humans who snapped photo after photo in breathless wonder at a sight so foreign to most city dwellers. By the end of the week we would watch with benignly jaded smiles as other tourists performed the same ritual, thinking, "You are new, aren't you?" Today, however, we were the newbies, and we all enthusiastically entered into the spirit of the occasion, and I especially was clicking away for all I was worth. It's a really good thing that God invented digital cameras, otherwise it would have cost a fortune in film, just to get this rather unimpressive image of a very vivid memory! (Ooh! Not long after our introduction to Lady Elk, we had the tumultuous joy of seeing a grey wolf trotting by the side of the road near our car. I managed to get the camera out in time to snap a few pictures, but they are not very good, and I won't post them here. Just to have seen it was exciting enough!! The poor thing was actually rather scared, and, in seeming confusion, tried to cross the road through quite heavy traffic. Eventually some never-to-be-chastised-sufficiently motorcyclist gunned his motor and ran at the animal, sending him off into some nearby woods. It was an ignoble end to an otherwise thrilling event.)

Here are our friends, Cheerful, Sweet. Mischievous, and Tolerant, also known as Scott, Mary, Ben and Emma. I'll let you figure out who is who.

It's nice to see that 5-year-old little boys can still cling to Daddy when the world looks very big. There's just something right about it.

The world isn't just big at Yellowstone, it's also very colorful. This huge caldera is so full of varied terrain that sometimes it feels like you're travelling from planet to planet as you move about the park. Our first official stop was the Artists Paintpots on the way to the Norris Geyser Basin. This was our introduction to the amazing things that heat can do to water and earth. Color and steam mingle here to create the picture which God himself envisioned when He called this place into being. I wonder how long this art will last before the forces which shaped it turn it into something entirely new, as must eventually happen. Even the stars don't last forever.

Ked and I played dueling cameras for our entire trip. Every time we turned around, there was Ked, recording the moment (and I, as well, had the shutter flying ad nauseum.) Over the week, he developed a technique to film us all from the hip, without our knowing he was doing it. He had the advantage on me here, because I was constantly looking through the viewfinder at whoever I was with, and I'm sure he proved far less annoying to the rest of the gang. I do have one advantage over him in the end, though. My photos are much easier to edit than his video, and it will be awhile before Yellowstone Video Of The Day makes it onto the Internet. I do hope to post some of it here; it just might take some time...

This wonderful bowl of goo is a giant mud-pot, bubbling and spitting away at the herd of humans crowded in as far as the rails around the path would let them. As for me, I know better than to get too close to this fascinating menace. The last time I was here, a particularly agile mud projectile flew right at me and instantly bleached a brand new, and bright red shirt. That acidic brew was so effective at ruining my clothing that the top immediately became a work shirt, never fit to be worn in the real world again.

That mud-pot is maybe thirty feet across, if memory serves--not really threatening, as long as you don't do something crazy like climb across the rail (hey, some people really are that insane)--just something to be respected. Just to be on the safe side, and knowing we were heading into the land of spouting mud that day, I made sure I wore clothing which had already seen some days as work wear. I probably should have warned my friends, though; the other ladies are wearing clothes that look like they might actually want to keep them!

Hey look!! Ked's face is out from behind the video camera!! Must snap a picture while I have the chance! I find the boardwalk wandering through this desolate wasteland, all interspersed with dazzling blue pools of potential death particularly interesting. The world of Yellowstone really is such a jumble of elements.

The clearness of the water here shows how odd these pools are. No gentle flow created this landscape. This isn't some collection of rainwater in an otherwise arid land. According to the Yellowstone website, Norris Geyser Basin is "the hottest and most changeable thermal area in Yellowstone." This is where worlds collide.

How fascinating is this rainbow flowing through the region of Norris called the Porcelain Basin? How long has it been here? How long will it last? Again, according to the official Yellowstone website, "Parts of the whitish rock-sheet before you pulsate from the pressure of steam and boiling water beneath them. A number of geysers and other features here have been born suddenly in small hydrothermal explosions. Some features are ephemeral, their activity lasting a few hours, days, or weeks. A few others have become relatively permanent fixtures in the scene." The constant change is one of the things which make this place so amazing.

After our trek through Norris, we climbed back into the car and headed farther into the park, stopping for a time in the Hayden Valley, a lovely place in its own right, and usually a great spot for seeing buffalo. The valley did not disappoint.

Speaking of worlds colliding, I'm betting the driver of the car ahead is hoping those horns don't collide with his rear end!!

I climbed through the sunroof to try and get a shot of this buffalo calf. The color contrast is pretty remarkable, don't you think? This baby has a bright new coat, and all the adults around it are still sloughing off the thick, dull coat of winter.

This is what happens to traffic in Yellowstone when the buffs are on the move (when any critter is in view from the highway, for that matter.) The line behind us was every bit as long. We just happened to be blessed with a front row seat!

This little bird doesn't just have a front row seat. He's in the thick of it--literally! That winter coat looks like fuzzy, peeling wallpaper, coming off in sheets--a little heavier maybe. You know that velvet kind from the 70s? The buffalo variety probably looked better in its time, and served more purpose than the velvet wallpaper ever did, though. (Okay, okay, it's a little decor snobbery to go along with the coffee snobbery previously mentioned. You can disagree with my design standards in the comments if you want--but why would you?)

Here's another little bird, who seems happy with his seat. I know the picture's blurry, but who could resist that smile?!

Here's one of the odder sights we saw that first day. We stopped to get a look at (and smell of) Sulphur Cauldron, and while walking caught sight of this fellow, enjoying a leisurely afternoon in one of the most active volcanic areas in Yellowstone, right next to a vaporous, chugging mud pit. It was hot, stinky, and, apparently, the perfect place for a snooze.

Neither Ked, nor I, are particularly fond of this photo, but it's one of the few pictures that we have to show that we were at Yellowstone at the same time, and that we both put down our cameras for long enough on that first day to have our picture taken! See--we're only mostly obsessed.

We finish our day with a stroll through the woods. These particular woods were shot through with lovely resting places such as Churning Cauldron, and the Mud Volcano, but for whole minutes at a time we had tranquil scenes such as this! Isn't it pretty? We needed the respite, too, for the following day was full of interesting trials, which I will share with you next time. I hope you've enjoyed our first day in Yellowstone. I know I certainly did!

My Brain

The only good thing about falling down the stairs and hurting yourself badly enough to need an MRI is getting to look at pictures of your brain. I don't know what any of them mean, but that's not the point--it's just massively cool that medical folk can non-invasively look inside your skull and figure out whether you need to worry about serious brain damage. I don't--at least no more than I ever did.

Wahkeena-Multnomah Loop

Ked and I finally made it out hiking last Sunday. It's the first time we've managed to make it to the Columbia Gorge all summer, and we felt the trip was long overdue. We headed for our favorite Gorge trail, a 5.4 mile jaunt that loops from Wahkeena Falls up and around to Multnomah falls, and then takes a short hop back to the starting point. If you know the Gorge at all, then you are probably aware that this hike starts out rather steeply (climbing about 1700 feet), levels out for a mile or so at the top, and then plunges back down, following Multnomah Creek past multiple waterfalls until you reach the famous Multnomah Falls Lodge. There is not a smidgen of dull or boring terrain on the whole trek. It's beautiful from the first step, and we chose a gorgeous day to hit the trails. I'm not going to jabber at you much this post. I'll just put up some pictures here to show you how beautiful the Columbia Gorge can be on a sunny day! (Click to enlarge.)

I loved the mist coming off this double falls at the beginning of the Wahkeena trail. So pretty.

I was cheerful, if a bit winded on the trail. It was so good to get out in the woods again--one of my favorite places to be. If I'd known what was coming later that night I might have been less light of heart. As I was heading down to bed (our bedroom is in the basement--very cool on hot summer nights), I fell down the stairs and banged myself up but good. I'm glad the tumble happened after the trip, though, instead of before we headed out. I'm not very happy about the shape I'm in right now, but I'd have been downright grumpy if the fall had preempted the hike!

At the top of the first stretch of switchbacks is this lovely view of the Columbia River. Now tell me that's not worth the climb!!

Oregon is the Beaver State, but I don't think beavers had anything to do with this particular water dam.

Here is Fairy Falls. I fall in love every time I see it.

At the top of the climb, you get a nice level passage that gives you a chance to rest before starting the descent. It takes a whole different set of muscles coming down the hill than it takes getting up, and can be quite the workout, in it's own way. I was glad of the respite.

I have no idea what kind of wildflowers these are. I just think they're pretty.

The trail along Multnomah Creek can get rather close to some very precipitous drop-offs. Good thing Ked is sure-footed! (Unlike me, it appears, if the incident with the stairs is any indication.)

I was still feeling pretty brave at this point. Not sure I'd venture that close to the edge again any time soon, with the tumble being fresh in my head--I'm still gripping the handrail awfully tight when going downstairs!! I'm sure I'll get my gumption back soon enough, but right now I can still hear my head going thump, thump, thump, thump, as it confirmed the existence of gravity the other night. I'm definitely a "keep away from the edge" kind of gal at the moment.

I think this passage is so cool! Ked's asleep right now, or I'd ask him whether this is "columnar jointing." He took a geology class in college that stuck with him pretty well. I've heard him use the term, but confess that I still need him to confirm the application.

Here is Multnomah falls from the east side, away from its famous bridge and lodge. Even without seeing the whole thing you can see some of its height. It's the second-highest year-round waterfall in North America, and draws tourists like crazy. We had the trail largely to ourselves before we got there. I'm not saying it was empty, but we spent an awful lot of time on our own. Once we got near Multnomah Falls, though, it was like making our way through a cattle auction. Unbelievably busy on a very hot summer day.

Here is one of Oregon's famous inverted tripod trees. Hard to miss, if you know what to look for. Okay, do I need to mention the Brooklyn Bridge and various parcels of swampland for sale, or did you catch the fact I was kidding? I just found this tree growth interesting.

After our hike, we ate at Multnomah Falls Lodge, which is a really beautiful old stone building. Good prime rib, too!

Here was the view from our table on the patio. Lovely, isn't it?

With that, I think I'll leave you for the night. It's getting late, and I still have to brave those basement stairs--once I work my nerve up, that is! Hopefully I'll have some more photos from Yellowstone posted soon. The Gorge isn't too bad in the meantime, though, wouldn't you agree?

This Cracked Me Up

Here's your chuckle for the day. My husband passed me an email with photos from a tax-related protest in Chicago. One of the signs made me belly laugh. I don't care what your political persuasion is, all right thinking folk must agree that this one is funny: "I listed the Federal Gov't as a dependent on my taxes this year." Have timelier, more appropriate words ever been put to cardboard? Even if you love how the money is getting spent in Washington these days, you have to admit they're going through an awful lot of it.

No agenda here--I just wanted to share a giggle with you for a minute. Carry on.

Yellowstone Adventure Pics: Getting There

I'm assuming that most of the people who come to this blog do so accidentally. You were looking at a picture on the web, and it just happened to originate here, or you searched on the phrase "Idaho drinking age" and you followed a Google link to discover that sometime, many years ago, I randomly referenced Idaho in a post I wrote about how the drinking age in every state in America got raised to 21. Very few of you are here because you know me, or because you are familiar with my writing and photographs. That's okay, and I always hope that whoever wanders by finds something that they enjoy enough to make the virtual trip worth at least the time it takes for the site to download. I must admit, though, that today's post probably isn't the one that's going to put me on your blog roll. Today is all about vacation photos, and worse yet, they're not even the "exotic journey in the Himalayas" type of photos. This little set of pictures is my personal memoir of travelling from Point A to Point B. Bail at will.

Now, I grant you, I think Point A (Portland, Oregon) is a pretty cool place to live, and Point B (Yellowstone National Park) is an absolutely fabulous place to visit, but getting from A to B is a long drive, and it's made even longer when you're pulling a trailer. There's no such thing as fast when you have 7,000 lbs. of house hitched to your bumper. My husband Ked and I have made this trip before, and found the drive totally worth it, so we knew what to expect, although this time we added a twist--our friends Scott and Mary came along for the ride, their two munchkins in tow. Our little trailer did yeoman duty, housing all six of us for twelve days and nights! It was a bit of a tight fit for Scott, who was a wee bit too tall for the table-turned-bed in which he and his five-year-old son slept, but other than a few back twinges, I'd say it worked out all right. Ked and I had no complaints. (You'll have to ask Scott and Mary whether they felt the same. They're too nice to gripe to our faces.) Anyway, it's about 840 miles from Portland to Old Faithful. Add to the regular drive time enough coffee, food and potty stops to keep six people relatively comfortable and happy in their seat belts, and you're looking at a couple solid days of driving.

We decided to tackle the trip strategically. Since we were travelling with a five-year-old and an eight-year-old, it made sense to get as much of the roadwork done as we could while the tots might possibly sleep away a portion of the miles. Accordingly, we set off after work on a Friday and planned to keep moving well past dark. Keep in mind, since this trip started at the end of June, dark didn't happen until sometime around 10 p.m., and we hoped to make good time before calling it quits for the night. Off we set, with high hopes of making it close to the Idaho border before finding a rest stop where we could climb into bed. (I just love that about the trailer. There's no "checking in" on the road needed, only pulling over.) I should say, Ked and I set off. Since our friends weren't hauling a house-on-wheels, they took the chance to run a few errands before leaving town, knowing they could catch up easily, or so we all thought.

That is where the first adventure, if you can call it that, of the fortnight occurred. Being well fueled with coffee and an eager spirit, Scott got a little too anxious to make up time, and within minutes of leaving home found himself pulling off the road--at the behest of a state trouper. Aargh! What a way to start a vacation!! The trouper dinged him for a hefty fine (need to fill up those dwindling state coffers, don'tcha know) and a still-eager, but much more restrained Scott and Mary started the long haul to re-connect with us and their beds for the night. It actually took far longer than we expected. We made good time, despite towing, and they had four people to keep comfortable, rather than just two, so twice the stops were necessary, and it wasn't until the sun had long since fled that we reunited. We all pulled into a rest area somewhere outside of La Grande, and gratefully slept until morning. (The rest of us slept, anyway. Scott--working on his second master's degree--had homework to finish.) We hoped that, with the ticket, we had gotten our mishap quota for the trip filled, and that it would be smooth trailing from here.

When morning came the adult members of the crew sought out coffee. Everybody sought out breakfast, and soon it was time to get moving again. We all did our best to make the journey as interesting as possible. The kids rode with me and Ked (allowing M and S some rare just-the-two-of-us time), and we sang songs, and played games with road signs and the alphabet, and often returned to that old favorite--20 questions. Gradually the day passed away. I confess that we eventually did resort to the video screen inside the car to keep the small fry entertained, but only after we had exhausted all other forms of munchkin amusement at our disposal.

We did plan a goodly time cushion in our day for stretching our legs, and Scott and Mary proved especially good at planning out diversions along the route. The best outing of the day came early, at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. (Mary and I were in agreement that the name leaves much to be desired.) Here we got to investigate a wagon train, and explore a mining operation, and by driving a little up the road, we got to walk on the actual, honest-to-goodness Oregon Trail! There we discovered that, while settlers may not still be passing along this route, there is an enthusiastic colony of mosquitoes desperately awaiting their return. We did not stay long on the Oregon Trail! Later in the day, farther down the road in Idaho, we checked out a place called Register Rock, which is a huge boulder (currently protected from modern abuse by a high and highly un-picturesque chain link fence), on which passing settlers carved their names and the dates of their arrival.

Soon after viewing this fine example of 150-year-old graffiti, we all reckoned it was time to settle in for the night, let the kid's ride their bikes for awhile, and allow our road weary bodies a nice hot shower before bedtime. Accordingly, we located the nearest campground, which happened to be Massacre Rocks State Park--isn't that a charming name? It actually was a lovely camping spot, despite its colorful moniker. Really, the name was merely keeping the tone of the journey to this point. During the previous day's travels, while still in Oregon, we had also made our way past such places of note as Poverty Flat, Old Emigrant Hill, and the ever cheerful Dead Man's Pass. Golly, don't you just want to head right there and make a home for yourself? No wonder people were emigrating! Of course, also on the previous night's journey, we got to drive by Lake Bob as well, so all hope was not lost. There is still cheer and whimsy in the world--even if you have to travel through Dead Man's Pass to get there!

Needless to say, we eventually made it to Grizzly RV Park, in West Yellowstone, Montana. That was the jumping off point from which the real fun began! The days (and the photographs) got much more interesting from there. What follows here are just a few snaps from the drive--almost all people shots, since this little post is mostly for my own memory's sake. Go ahead and have a look. If you've stuck it out this long, you might as well hang in there the rest of the way... (Click on 'em if you want to make 'em bigger.)



When we opened our eyes that first morning at the rest area, this is what we saw. Not a bad view for a parking lot by the side of the road, and not at all what we expected to wake up to when we parked our cars in the dead of night.



Here's The Boy, doing what boys do. See a fire pit, stir it with a stick! It's the law or something, right? I'm sure that eventually he stopped to notice the covered wagons and vast countryside. Maybe.


Wandering down some stairs, and taking a few turns in the path ahead, we eventually came to this fun and educational water feature. Pretty amazing that folks actually found gold this way, just carried along by the water until it got stopped by notches in the bottom of a trough. People are seriously ingenious, you know that? Really, we take engineering and technology so much for granted, but people had to think this stuff up, from mining operations, to pyramids, to iPods. It's all amazing.

Okay, okay, it's not the most flattering picture (except of Scott there grinning away, a rare photographic moment.) I include it, though, because this is the big moment. All five of them are standing where the ruts of the covered wagons can still be seen in the hard Oregon dirt. It's the Trail, and I have to record that. Besides, this is the only picture they would let me take. They were all being eaten alive by the thirsty, blood-sucking mosquitoes, and that was as close to still as they were going to stand while in that spot. Truth be told, these little vampires were just the warm-up act. It turned out that Yellowstone had a particularly wet winter and spring, and meat was on the menu the whole trip. I must gratefully, and somewhat guiltily, report that I am pretty much immune to the little beasties, but even I found them really annoying because of their sheer numbers and ever-present buzzing. I felt terribly sorry for everyone else, though. They got munched so badly you could have drawn constellation maps on their legs. Death to all mosquitoes!!

I really have nothing to narrate about this picture. Girlie just looks so adorable that I couldn't resist posting this one.

Here is evidence that we did, indeed, make use of the DVD player in the car that second day. Can't say it didn't keep the munchkins content!

Here are Mary and I at Register Rock. (Mary left, me right.) We were the photographers for the trip, so getting both of us in a picture was something of a trick. Ked manned the video camera, and Scott took charge of all things which required maps. All in all, it worked out equitably, although I'm sure I drove everyone nuts by the second day, because I live by the philosophy that if you take a hundred pictures, five will turn out. I snap a lot of pictures.

Here's a more flattering picture of Ked, to make up for the mosquito-flailing shot from earlier. Behind him is the Snake River. This was our view first thing, early the second morning, when we woke up at Massacre Rocks. Looks a lot nicer than it sounds, don't you think?

Just to be a good sport, and prove that I'm not above humiliating myself for the sake of keeping things equitable regarding the mosquitoes-on-the-Oregon-Trail photo, here's a view of me, first thing, early that second morning. I am not a morning person, so I hope this squares me with the fairness police (the ones that live inside my head.) The things I do to keep from feeling guilty...

Next up--Yellowstone National Park!!

Yellowstone Preamble

I'm supposed to be packing. I have eight typed pages of checklists to make sure I remember everything. (Yes, I am a bit compulsive about checklists.) Ked and I are heading to Yellowstone tomorrow. I'm so excited I can hardly think straight--thus the need for all the lists! We're taking our trailer, two friends and their two children on a twelve day excursion. I better not forget anything. Twelve days is a long time to go without shampoo! (Yes, I know, most people would just buy it on the road, but do you know how hard it can be to find unscented shampoo at a truck stop? Not even an option.) I've been cooking and prepping for weeks, and we will try to cram all that food, clothing and sundry supplies into our little 22' trailer tonight and hit the road tomorrow afternoon.

I'm nowhere near ready to go as I sit here typing. Why then, you ask, am I wasting time on a blog post when there's work to be done? Answer: I can't help myself!! I started thinking about all the great hikes and sights the last time we visited Old Faithful, and my mind wouldn't rest until I dug up a few of the memories. I just had to pass a few of them on to you. The picture quality isn't great, but it's the best our technology at the time could manage, so here we go. I won't spend lots of time captioning. (There, the limited captioning ought to give me at least two or three extra minutes of packing time!! Whew. That'll save my hide later when the pressure is really on!)


I can't wait until the kids (8 and 5) see their first buffalo... or elk... or moose... or bear. Whee!! This should be fun!

Everywhere you go there are landscapes that look like they belong on some alien planet. If I remember correctly, this beauty is called "Morning Glory."

Not all the hot springs are particularly benign. There is something a little disconcerting when you are in Yellowstone about knowing that you are in a giant caldera and the volcano ain't exactly sleeping soundly.

Evey time I see this picture it makes me think about that cartoon that I used to read when I was a kid. What was the name of that little guy? Iggy? Izzy? Something like that. It's gonna bug me till I remember. Anybody else have a clue? Ziggy, maybe?

I know it's only been six years, but I can't get over how much younger Ked and I look. (Psst. Don't tell him I said that...)

Who is that mere infant standing there, and when we see her next will she have any feet?

We saw this family of bald eagles every day as we entered the park. Dad, Mom and youngster made that nest a must-visit to start each day's adventures. Once we got to see Dad flying in a big, fat fish and dropping it to his eagerly waiting family. Ked actually caught the whole flight on video. How cool is that!?

Well, so much for limited captions! I'll end with this little shot, stitched together from several others. We took our time playing with the camera until we figured out the "panorama" setting. I know it will be different this time around, because we probably can't ask the kids to wait while we get just the right photo, or drag them on seven mile hikes, or make them sit in a car for hours hoping a moose walks by, but this adventure will be great in its own way, I know. I can't wait to get to Wyoming again and see all the amazing places, animals, geysers, mud pots and all the rest, through fresh, young eyes. Hurry up tomorrow!! Oops, that reminds me--I better get packing!

Sight Restored

I'm heading over to my church to work on some rooms I'm remodelling, but something came in my email that is completely, unbelievably, wonderfully cool, and I had to take a minute to pass it your way. Scientists are discovering more and more ways they can heal you with stem cells from your own body. I can't believe how simple, quick and painless this one is--take a look!

Aaaarrgh!!!

Plumbing disaster number SIX has just struck our home. That's six in less than two months!! The only good news here is that we've got to run out of plumbing-related things to go down the drain soon. There just aren't that many possibilities left--everything else has already broken.

Star Trek

Went to see the new Star Trek movie this afternoon! I haven't been to a theater in a very long time--not many films can lure me into "Overpriced Discomfort World," but I've been watching Star Trek since I was five years old, and it beckons like the purr of a baby tribble, or the distress call of a Federation science outpost under attack from a Romulan Warbird. I will not bore you with my opinions about casting choices, character development, relationship twists, time travel, alternate time-lines, or the potential for exciting sequels. These are judgements every sci fi fan must make for themselves. The definite opinion I will offer, though, is that this movie is FUN! I was thoroughly entertained, and loved some of the nods to the original series. If you're in the mood for some rollicking sci fi adventure, you could do worse than to go see the latest Roddenberry spawn--a lot worse.

Fun In The Sun!

Ked's home from the office this week, and we're tackling some long-neglected and much-anticipated home improvement projects. We have been going gangbusters, and been extremely productive. The weather has been perfect for what we are doing, and even the one bout of surprisingly intense rain we had on Tuesday did not hinder us. We are cruising through our extremely lengthy to-do list. We won't get it finished this week, by any means, but the list is looking more manageable all the time. We now have working sinks and faucets in both our bathroom and our kitchen, the pipe is laid in the ditch that runs from our gutter downspout to our newly-dug dry-well, we have drywall up in the unfinished part of our basement, all of the furniture and stuff has been packed up and moved out of what used to be my sewing room (but has been unusable for the last five years--yes, the to-do list is that long), and we are ready to get to the destruction and reconstruction portion of our "vacation." I'm starting the demo on the sewing room remodel today, while Ked will be replacing the sealing around the windows and door on our travel trailer. (We have to get it ready for our trip to Yellowstone--only a month away!!) As you can see, we are getting so much done! I'm almost dizzy with the thrill of it all!!

Needless to say, there's not been a lot of time this week for recreational reading. We've been hopping, but something came into my email inbox that caught my eye, and I took a minute to follow a link to this little piece about a new tech toy that I thought was very cool. Imagine that you are working out in the hot sun, say, digging a dry-well, or, if you want to have a little fun instead, you are out hiking on a desert trail. Wouldn't some music be nice? Kind of a pain, though, since the cord to your headphones got all tangled while you were digging, and/or the batteries to your wireless set died ten minutes into your hike. Such a pain. Couldn't you use some solar-powered Bluetooth headphones for just such occasions? This fun little gadget isn't a reality yet--just a glimmer in the inventive eye of engineering student Shepeleff Stephen, but I'm sure something like it is on the way, and soon. I'm guessing you'll have such a toy on your head long before Ked and I have made it all the way through our home improvement to-do list. We're making serious progress, but these days technology gets conceived and invented so quickly that these things will probably be obsolete before I get the first coat of mud on the new sewing room drywall.

Well, I'm off to be productive. Need to make hay while the sun shines!! Maybe soon we'll be making music while the sun shines, or listening to it, anyway.

Scary

I've mentioned recently that I'm not particularly brave, rather a chicken, in fact. People, especially, tend to make me wary, because they are unpredictable and it's hard to read their motives. You just can't know what's going on inside another person. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, because it's what I want from them, but it's hard not to interpret certain signals negatively and go into emotional-self-protection mode. My tendency is to duck and cover. I don't want to be hurt, and my instinct is to make myself a smaller target and "disappear" when I think other people are unhappy with me, or have rejected me. It's probably not the wisest approach to life. Things go unresolved when you disappear, and if other people can possibly interpret your motives wrongly, it's a pretty good bet that they will a large portion of the time. Protecting yourself emotionally by withdrawing from potential sources of pain can be interpreted as rejecting others, for example, or as punishing someone else for previous hurts. It doesn't matter what's true, usually, or how much internal good will you have toward others. What matters is what's perceived, and it's hard to reengage once walls have been built to hide behind. I usually need encouragement to come out from behind them, and it's often the case that that encouragement never comes. It would be far better never to hide in the first place, but instinct is a hard thing to fight. That's a problem I'm still wrestling with, the struggle between instinct and wisdom. May God grant me grace and strength for the ongoing struggle.

So what happens when this occurs on an international scale? What happens when it's countries interacting, interpreting motives, and even "disappearing?" China, for example, withdrew from the world for a good deal of the twentieth century. Isolating herself from other nations, she put up a big Do Not Disturb sign and turned her back on the rest of humanity. That has changed for the most part these days. China wants trading partners, and customers to buy the goods of her billion or so budding entrepreneurs. The world has pretty much thrown its arms wide to China, buying her merchandise and exploring this once closed land. The Olympics gave the Chinese government the perfect chance to cast as benign a light as possible on her culture, people and intentions. Still, the international community does not know China very well after all those years of isolation, and there's bound to be some legitimate suspicion.

As an example of a "how am I supposed to interpret that" scenario, what should the world make of China's development of new and extremely powerful weapons systems? Gizmag has an article out today about what is believed to be a new and truly scary Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile, "capable of targeting and destroying US aircraft carriers"--in one shot. How does the world, and the U.S. in particular, go about giving China the benefit of the doubt here? Are the Chinese, in their own way of thinking, just protecting themselves from real or perceived threats, or are they getting ready to attempt a take-over of Taiwan? How should the countries of the world react?

Is China's development of aircraft carrier killers any different than the U.S. developing what we would consider defensive weapons systems, like Star Wars, or is China just keeping ahead of the game in a big, bad world? Many would say that China has shown herself to be a bully, and that once places like Tibet are free, then we can talk about China's legitimate right to self-defense. Of course, many in the world (I consider them in error) would say that the U.S. is a bully, and has no right to limit the military acquisitions of any other sovereign nation. For example, some people would say Iran has a perfect right to develop nuclear weapons capability. They would claim that if we can do it, Iran should be able to as well. Of course, the U.S. doesn't go around supporting Canadian terrorists and threatening to wipe Mexico off the map, as Iran has done with Iraq, Lebanon and Israel, so I'd say there are moral canyons between America and Iran, but that doesn't change the fact that reasonable people can disagree on the rights of nations, and that it's a difficult task to interpret the motives of another person, let alone another culture. I'd say Iran is pretty hard to misinterpret, if you take them at their word at all, but China is a different story. China is not nearly as talkative as Iran. Can we really know what the Chinese powers intend?

So, how should the U.S. react to this Chinese development? The Gizmag article makes it seem that the U.S. is taking this new weapon pretty darned seriously. I'm glad that I don't have to make the decisions here. As I've said, I'm a bit of a coward. I'd probably just duck my head and hope the situation went away. Okay, not really, but I'm taking my earlier analogy to its ludicrous extreme. Hmm... is it so ludicrous, though? I'm sure there are lots of people here in the States who would love to give China the benefit of the doubt, as we would like others to give it to us, and assume that her intentions are totally self-protective and not at all aggressive in nature. They would love to simply ignore the situation and assume that China will just happily go along supplying Wal-Mart with inexpensive merchandise, but can we afford to be that charitable and trusting? Probably not. Instinct says that not everybody can be trusted. Wisdom actually says the same thing. I hope the Chinese motives truly are as benign as the face they tried to show the world during the Olympics, but I also hope that the U.S. military finds a counter to this aircraft carrier killer soon. Both instinct and wisdom are telling me that's a good idea. May God grant us all grace and strength for the ongoing struggle.

Courage

Pajamas Media has the story of some incredible women standing up against tyranny in Afghanistan. Appalling things are happening there, but given the history and current conditions, I'm amazed that these women could find the fortitude to protest. I'm pretty sure I could never be that brave...

One Day This Will Be Funny

I was talking to my friend Mary today, telling her about my rather challenging weekend, and she told me I needed to write it down to remember later, as one day this story would be funny. I thought this was a good notion, because the adventures of the past weekend are probably worthy of special remembrance, with enough weight to hang around for a long time, growing and deepening, until the memory rightfully achieves the status of legend in the annals of home improvement here in Meowville. I can certainly see how telling it right could make it funny, and if I were Dave Barry or Bill Cosby, you would be clutching your sides already, holding back the chortles while you tried to focus your eyes through the streaming tears of laughter. Unfortunately for you, I am not Dave Barry, so I will simply relate the events as I remember them, and you can take your chances.

Saturday started out memorably for Ked and me for one clear reason. We had nothing on the calendar. Oh, we had lots of things we should be doing, and lots of places we needed to go, but the official events of the day had melted away one by one, so that we were left staring at a completely unstructured day, and complete freedom as to how to spend it. We wanted to watch The Passion of the Christ that night (since it was Easter Eve), but had a whole day to get something useful done!! It was liberating and terrifying all at the same time. I swallowed my guilt at not rushing over to the church to pick up work on the remodelling project which has languished there for the last month while Ked and I battled various illnesses, and together we decided to tackle a small-but-important task that has been needing attention here at home. For the last six months we have had a brand new toilet sitting in our garage, waiting patiently for the day to arrive when it would be officially installed into its new home. This was to be the final step in the bathroom overhaul which we started six months ago. The new tub, sink and most of the floor were in, and the toilet was the only major piece of the puzzle remaining unfinished.

We only have one bathroom, so we weren't willing to tackle this task without plenty of time to see the job through. We did not want to find ourselves with the project unfinished at the end of the day, and even though installing toilets is neither complicated, difficult, nor particularly time consuming, things can and do often go wrong in home improvement, and we didn't want to be taking any chances. So, the box stayed in the garage for all those many months until the moment finally arrive. We were excited. This was our chance!!

Oh, if only we had listened to ourselves about that "plenty of time to see the job through" thing. As the morning went on, and the phone kept ringing, and the hours crept past, we should have realized that this chance was rapidly slipping away. We even talked about it. "Oh gosh, the rest of the world is not cooperating. We've spent too much time on the phone, and responding to important emails. We better put this project off again." Did we listen to ourselves, though? No!! After deciding that we probably needed to delay the work, I made the choice to "just do a little of the prep work," and then Ked decided "just to bring the box in and have a look." Then we finally committed ourselves to lunacy, and at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, we jumped into the project full steam ahead, tore out the old toilet and tossed it, broken and bleeding, into our trailer to be carried away to porcelain heaven. It was a very old toilet, and we really did have to damage it to get it out of there, a circumstance which was to kick us a bit later, when we were down.

After the old unit came out, we spent some time replacing the last section of flooring and putting in some molding which was much easier to install with the giant porcelain barrier removed. Progress!! We were ready to move on to the main event. We very carefully followed the instructions which came in the big cardboard box. We made sure all the parts were there, and we gathered all the proper tools and materials. We successfully maneuvered our way through every step, and when we were done we were thrilled! It looked great, and felt solid. Now for the moment of truth! We flushed.

Oh, the joy! Oh, the triumph! Oh, the water gushing everywhere!! What had gone wrong? We tightened bolts, we examined connections. We took off the lid and poked and prodded. We inspected everyplace that could possibly be leaking. We came up with no clue why our meticulously installed toilet was making puddles on our new floor. Aargh!! This is why you do not start projects like this at 2 in the afternoon! We figured it was time to take the thing out and start over. We figured we must have messed up when we put on the wax seal. So, we knelt down to start the removal process, but decided to give it one last flush to see if the problem would reveal itself. That's when I saw it. As I lay on the floor in a position in which you almost never find yourself in relation to toilets (unless you are living in a college dorm), I saw it. It was a hole in the porcelain, right there where the bowl meets the pedestal. An honest-to-goodness, straight-from-the-factory chasm, through which poured more water than I could imagine coming from a hole which was not big enough to observe without close and desperate inspection, but which turned out to be plenty big enough to flood the area with H2O.

Get used to the word Aargh!! We used it a lot that day. Out came the brand new toilet. Into the box it went. We knew we had a receipt somewhere, but it was now going on four hours that we had been without a toilet (did I mention we only have one bathroom?), and we were feeling pretty strongly inclined to remedy this situation, so off we went to Home Depot. We knew they would be good about the receipt. All we wanted was to exchange the unit for one which came without pre-fabbed extra holes, and besides, this could be classed as something of a plumbing emergency, right?

Home Depot was, as we knew they would be, really great about it. The helpful cashier wrote down the brand info for us, so that we could go hunt down another toilet, while he got the return taken care of at his end. We went back into the bowels of the store (sorry, I couldn't resist), only to find that they didn't have any more of this unit. As it turned out, they had never had any of this unit! It had been six months since we bought it, and we had forgotten that we had been at Lowe's when we made the purchase. Terrific. We waved goodbye to the uselessly helpful Home Depot employee and made our way out to Gresham. It only took us about half an hour to make the trip. What's half an hour when you have all day? Oh wait--we didn't have all day. By this point, it was nearly seven. We made the exchange at Lowe's, after a little more fuss from them about the lack of receipt than we had experienced from the Depot, but eventually we found the identical toilet, put it in the back of our car and started what seemed to us to be a very long drive home. We stopped for a quick burger along the way, since home improvement never goes well on an empty stomach, and we didn't want tempers to start flaring. We made it home by about 9.

Eagerly, we lugged the big heavy box in the house, plopped it down in the dining room and cut the tape which sealed the container at every conceivable fold, joint and seam. Out came the tank. Out came the bowl. No holes. We're ahead of the game! Out came the seat, and then out came... nothing. There was no hardware in that box. As taped up as that box had been, we didn't notice that the unit had been opened and returned by a previous customer, who had neglected to include everything which came with his purchase when he sealed things up again. I can't even begin to tell you how frustrated we were. It's nearly nine-thirty. We have no toilet. The stores close at ten, and we can't even put the old toilet back in to get us by for awhile, because we broke it when we took it out! Get ready for it--Aargh!! (Although, I must admit, the language had gotten a bit less printable than that at this point.)

Out we trudged to Gresham again, just beating the store closing. This time we inspected every box, and discovered that ALL the toilets of that brand had boxes that appeared to have been previously opened. This did not bode well for future installation, so we decided to move on to a different option. Of course, when we looked, there was this reason why we couldn't get that affordable toilet, and that reason why we couldn't get another, and by the time we were done, we ended up spending another $180, on top of the money that we already had invested in the ticking time bomb that sat in our garage for six months, waiting to pounce on our unsuspecting and hopeful Saturday. By this point we didn't even care. We just wanted to get home and get the blasted thing installed. Ked had to be up at six in the morning to make it to worship rehearsal for Easter Sunday service. This toilet promised "40% faster installation." We plunked down our money and headed home.

It is with great gratitude that I report that the extra-spendy toilet really did install 40% faster than the gusher did. We finally had a working bathroom by approximately eleven o'clock that night. We heaved a deep sigh of relief. (Actually, I coughed a deep sigh of relief. I am still recovering from the worst flu bug Ked or I have ever had during the whole course of our 22-year marriage. To say I was tired at this point would be an understatement of very large proportions.) Anyway, our movie time was trashed, but we would not have to knock on the neighbor's door at two in the morning begging to use their facilities. We had survived!

There is one little addendum to this tale of woe. As we were inspecting the toilet during the initial gushing fiasco, we had to remove the lid. We placed it on the vanity, miscalculated the distance, and dropped it in our new porcelain sink. That sink did not survive. The toilet top punched a five inch hole in the bottom of the sink, reducing our once-functional bathroom temporarily to nothing but a tub. We tore the rest of the bowl out on Monday and plan to replace it sometime over the course of the next few days. Yes, we currently have no bathroom sink, and are brushing our teeth in the kitchen these days. The saga continues. Oh well. At least we have a toilet, and a story to tell. Someday, we may even laugh at it. Wish Dave Barry were here.

Quike The Adventure!

Hee hee. I bet you think I forgot to use Spellcheck, don't you? I bet you think I meant to write Quite The Adventure, isn't that right? Good logic, based on standard English usage, but ever so wrong, despite your solid reasoning. Then what in the world has happened to the English language, you may be wondering? Could this be yet another new word invented to cover some remarkable new tech discovery, or some new form of kid-speak that is sweeping through text messages like wildfire? No, I assure you, if it were some new lingo for the under-twenty-five set, I would have next to no way of knowing about it, ancient as I am. Okay, I do have some friends on Facebook who are in the text-speak generation, but most of what they write in said language goes completely over my head and I require translation on a regular basis. So, I would not dare to attempt to such generationally sensitive pseudo-gibberish myself without intense underage supervision, and Spellcheck would be as useless as a rotary-dialed cell phone.

Well then, what about the new-tech thing? No, that's not really it either. The word "quike" does not refer to a new-fangled technological breakthrough, though we're getting warmer. In fact, although there has, indeed, been a new twist added, the technology of which I speak is quite old. The humble bicycle was making its mark as innovative and cutting-edge way back in the 19th century, and the horse-and-buggy crowd were mocking bicycle riders as early as 1885. However, as we all know, forward-thinking bicyclists have had the last laugh. Nowadays, only the rich and the Amish can afford to stable horses, while the bicycle is used by millions of people for their principal means of transportation. Seen any video out of China lately? The bicycle is king. A little impractical for winter transportation in Oregon, maybe, but still a reliable and enjoyable means of getting around. Indeed, biking is my husband's favorite form of exercise.

So, now for the twist. A bike has two wheels, so the quike would have? Yes, I win the obvious-question-of-the-day award. It doesn't take the quadratic equation to figure out that a quike would have four wheels, along with the ability to cover rough terrain and carry loads that a mere bicycle would never be able to manage. (Although I've seen some of that aforementioned video out of places like China where skilled pedalers carry impossible-looking loads on their two-wheelers--balancing burdens the size of small cars on bicycles the size of, well, bicycles.) Four wheels add stability and weight distribution, and also add an ability to share the load when there's a second seat for additional pedal power.

So, what is the use for all that extra hauling ability? Four wheels probably wouldn't make it any easier to navigate the crowded streets of Beijing. What about more open landscapes, though? Rough rural roads, sand and snow? Well, there are a couple of ambitious and energetic young people out of Australia who are planning to muscle close to a thousand pounds of gear, supplies and body weight on a 7,400 mile, year-long journey that will take them through "Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Western China (Xinjiang) and Southern Russia (Tuva)." It's a pretty interesting story, which you can read here, along with some design info on the quike.

Roger Chao and Megan Kerr are hoping to document some of the vanishing local customs and stories from the cultures they will encounter, even as they take on the tremendous physical challenges of the trip. You can read more about their objectives at their website. They plan on keeping an ongoing online journal of their trip. (Ahh, the blessing of video cameras, tiny, portable computers and satellite technology. The twenty-first century does have a few things going for it.) I hope they do well in this effort. It would be interesting to read about their journey as it happens and explore these distant locations and cultures vicariously. I love discovering different places and people, although I don't think I would ever have the ambition to commit to peddling my way across 7,400 miles of remote and rugged, and multi-languaged terrain. That, like text-speak, is something best left to the young.

Portland's Japanese Garden

I'm needing a flashback to something fun and nice today. It's been a hard week. (Heck, it's been a hard winter, truth be told.) Husband's sick. I'm sick. Again. I'm tired of being sick. Whine, gripe, whimper. I did get some good work done on the church remodel project this week, which is a blessing. One of the advantages of being sick a lot (yes, we are striving to be positive), is that you learn how to ignore pain and fatigue and function anyway. I decided that I would feel better mentally if I just went ahead and got something useful done, and I was right. If you're going to feel lousy physically no matter what you do, you might as well be productive if you can, right? Now, I still feel lousy, but I feel lousy with one more coat of mud on the walls. I can live with that.

Anyway, right now I'm waiting to take some friends to the airport before heading over for one more round of productive enterprise. (Corrective update--never made it to the church. By the time I got back from the airport my temperature was up three degrees. I'm not working on anything for awhile.) I thought now would be a good time to dip into some cheerful memories, and take care of some photographic housekeeping at the same time. It's high time I sorted and posted some of my favorite pics from the Portland Japanese Garden, an authentic Japanese garden near Washington Park and the Oregon Zoo. I took a stroll through this beautiful pleasure-ground (actually five gardens in one) last June with my dear friend Su. Yes, I have been holding on to these pictures for almost a year without actually doing anything with them! Kinda pathetic, eh? Oh well, I've picked out the ones I like now, and am ready to share them with the world. (Heh. Maybe I should narrow that "the world" thing down to a very small subset of the world that will happen to randomly wander by when they Google "feline misspellings," or something equally random.) No matter. Here goes. I don't have a lot to say about many of these, so I'll mostly let the images speak for themselves, okay?

I found this rather interesting. In the midst of all the natural beauty--stone, wood, water, trees, moss and flowers--there is something that looks very much like Plexiglas. Hmmm, how did that get in here? Pretty, though.

There was some official showing going on in the art gallery, to which Su and I lacked an invite, so I had to content myself with peering in from the outside and trying to use the reflections and glass I shot this photo through as an asset as best I could. I kind of like how it turned out, and really think the vase is beautiful and creative. It's not something I would use to decorate my own rather "traditional" American house, but I love to see it in its native habitat.

Here is Su, sketchpad in hand. While I snapped photos, she was happily engaged in drawing whatever took her fancy. Her method took little longer, but her pencil never ran low, whereas my camera battery barely gasped its way through the afternoon. I'd say we both enjoyed our chosen form of artistic expression for the day, which is what counts, right?

How is it the Japanese manage to make something artistic out of plain old ordinary grey boulders, without even adding flowers to brighten up the scene? I don't know--I sure couldn't pull it off--but somehow it works in this setting.

I loved getting the picture of this bee. Isn't this pretty? You can see the cells in the lovely little pollinator's wings! (You can really see the detail if you click on the picture to enlarge it.)

Su sketched this scene for quite a while. (The drawing was beautiful--wish I had a copy.) She drew quite a crowd at one point when a tour group wandered by. One lady was actually rather annoying about it, hovering over Su's shoulder and making comments about what she saw. I was impressed that Su managed to take it in stride and still put out a charming sketch, despite the distraction.

While Su was busily putting pencil to paper, I waited for this bridge to clear so I could snap this photo. It was a very limited opportunity moment. The gardens were busy that day (of course they were busy--have you noticed all that beautiful sunshine?), and this is the only chance I got in about 15 minutes of waiting for the sketch artist to complete her latest vision. Don't know that the picture was worth all that hovering, but now that I've snapped it, by golly, I'm going to post it!!

What would Japanese gardens be without koi? Inconceivable.

Well, there you have it, only ten months after the fact... Don't think of these pictures as being late and out of their proper time. Think of them as getting us in the mood for summer! It certainly brightened my mood to post them. Hope you enjoyed them too.

Star Wars-Inspired Mosquito Destruction

What's not to like? Frank J. at IMAO calls this the Mosquito Death Star. Being developed in the U.S. as a way to fight malaria, it's a laser which hears that peculiar little annoying whine that mosquitoes make, and then zeros in to blast the little bloodsuckers into a galaxy far, far away. (Does that work as a euphemism for a quick and thorough death?) Okay, so the inspiration was from Star Wars, the missile defense system, and a degree of separation or two away from Star Wars, the generation-shaping science fiction escapist movie icon, but who cares? This technological gift to man and beast can potentially kill millions of evil mosquito warrior clones in just a few minutes. There is no downside here. May the Force be with it!

(Maybe it would help me get my husband to venture outside on warm summer nights...)

Worth A Look

I don't care where you stand politically. This is worth seeing. It's what a trillion dollars looks like.

Hat tip: IMAO

Winlock Takes Fifth In State!!

Hi basketball fans! If you're not a basketball fan, you might as well bail now, because this post is all about how awesome the Winlock boys basketball team is, and how proud I am of my nephew, Jake Brown! The Winlock Cardinals beat the Naches Valley Rangers 56-38 on Saturday morning to take fifth in the Washington 1A Boys Basketball Tournament--their best trophy ever at the state level. According to the Associated Press, they shot 59 percent from the field to get there, and were 11 for 17 in the second half. The quarters in high school ball are only 8 minutes long, so you can imagine what an exciting game it was for them to rack up 58 points in 32 minutes! Jake scored 14 points and hauled down 10 rebounds to cap off a stellar senior year, and Ked and I couldn't be more proud of him.

All the boys showed tremendous grace under pressure, and one of the things which impressed us the most watching them through the season was how focused they were the whole time they were on the court. These kids are not whiners. They don't blame a bad game on bad calls (not that they had many bad games--they ended the year 24-3), and they don't waste energy "acting" to sway the refs. (We did see some of that at the tourney from other teams. Found it pretty sad.) They just play basketball really, really well. The starters on the squad have been playing together since they were tykes, and it shows. They work together and care about the team more than they care about their own glory. Not that there's not glory to be had--as 6'9" Jake wandered conspicuously through the crowd after the game, kids who barely reached his knees were clambering for his notice. Autograph hounds had him signing programs and shirts. One enthusiastic fan, lacking a souvenir at hand, even had Jake sign his chest! It's enough to turn anyone's head, but Winlock's boys seem to have kept theirs on their shoulders. Everyone we've talked to about the squad has said over and over that these are good kids, and good friends who just love playing the game together. That's a joy to watch.

I only wish I got to watch more of this particular game. Ked practiced all day Friday at the tournament with the camera to get the perfect action shots, but at the last minute he got recruited to camcorder duty (this is the result of snagging front row seats), so I was left with the Canon SLR and a big fat zoom lens, neither of which were particularly familiar to me. I did my best. I missed a lot of the action, because I was so focused on following Jake around in the viewfinder, hoping to catch some magic moments, but it was a lot of fun anyway, and I think I snagged a few memories for Jake and the family. Hope you enjoy them. (Click on the photos to enlarge them. I didn't bother to reduce the file size for these pictures, so some of them will be too big for the screen and you'll have to scroll around a bit to catch everything, but some of them really are worth seeing in their bigger versions.)

The game begins. I don't know why Coach Gary Viggers has his head in his hands, but I assure you that didn't last. Viggers had a lot to be happy about in this final game of his coaching career at Winlock. The boys did him proud. Just as a side note, Tyler Hertz walked by my husband and me after the game. He's number three in the Cardinal jersey. Ked noted, "Wow. You look a lot smaller on the court!" That's because Tyler is 6'2". He's something of a tree in his own right, but when the average height of your starting line-up is 6'5", even Tyler starts looking petite!

The guys fought tough right from the beginning. Jake works hard the whole time he's on the court, as this Naches Ranger is finding out.

Those legs may be long, but Jake can get low when he needs to. Look at the concentration on that face!

I'm bummed I cut the top of the ball off in this shot, but look at that form!! Two of his fourteen points are on their way.

Winlock is always tough on the boards. Here's one of Jake's 10 rebounds. Ked and I watched Naches Valley win their match on Friday and were impressed with how well Naches shot from the outside, especially number 33 (whose name I do not know and am too lazy to Google). We were afraid that hot shooting might give Winlock some trouble, but the Cardinals shut them down pretty effectively. Naches only shot 33 percent for the game, making 13 of 40 attempts at the basket. Winlock cleaned up at the boards in the process.

I don't remember Jake being born with springs in his legs, but they must have been there, because the evidence is all over the place when he's on the court.

Winlock's solid performance included a good showing from the line. Jake made all 4 of his free throws. Here, Jordan Davis takes his best shot, although, I confess, I don't know if this one went down. I was too busy trying to follow Jake with the camera to see if he pulled down a rebound! Sorry, Jordan. You're important, too. Honest!

Nothing particular to say for this one. Just catching a little nice ball handling. Basketball really is a great game.

And the crowd goes wild!! Jake slammed this ball home with authority. I had been listening to the crowd behind me for much of the fourth quarter as the expectant fans kept asking themselves, "When's Jake going to dunk the ball? When's he gonna put on a show?" Well, Jake delivered. Look at those guys in the bleachers. The one in the dark shirt is the fellow who is now walking around with Jake's name written on his chest in sharpie marker! I'd say he looks pretty happy, wouldn't you?

This whole team of boys are so good together. From what I am told, even the young ones get treated like family. You gotta love this. This is why interscholastic sports exist. These boys have spent years together learning hard work, and sportsmanship, and team over self. The whole town of Winlock is proud of them, and rightly so. Way to go Cardinals! Congratulations!!

Being Winlock's tallest player, a high scorer, rebounding machine and general all-around stud, Jake often gets interviewed after a game. This is the first time I've seen the headphones and mic routine, though. Would have liked to have caught this radio interview, but I was 75' away taking pictures with my telephoto lens. Caught a few really good ones, but I'll only show you one. The rest are for his Mom and grandparents. They'll want to seen all 544 of them!! (Kidding. I think there are only 523.)

I did have to throw in one more interview shot. I couldn't resist this one of Jake towering over his coach and the interviewer. I've got to ask Sheila what she feeds this kid!



Here is the moment you've all been waiting for. Sharpie meets flesh. I told Jake if he's ever famous I'm selling this one on EBay.

I'll finish up with a cheerful family photo. That's Ked on the left, and the 6'6" bear of a man with him on the right is Jake's extremely happy brother Josh. Josh played in this same game, at this same tournament, a number of years ago, but his team came up just a little short and took home the eighth place trophy. Josh was thrilled to see his brother win this game. The glow on his face says it all. I don't think a brother or uncle could be prouder than these two. The whole family, in fact, was about as happy as I've ever seen them. We're all sorry it's over for the year, but we're looking forward to seeing where Jake goes to college and learning to love whatever team he becomes a part of. There will probably be some nostalgia for this special hometown team, but if Jake's a part of it, the new one will be special too. Congratulations again Jake. Your family loves you. Congratulations again, too, to the Winlock Cardinals Boys Basketball Team. You guys are awesome!

Down In The Valley

I have a little road trip report for you this evening. Ked and I drove from Portland to the Yakima Valley in central Washington today, so we can watch our nephew Jake play in the Washington State 1A Boys Basketball Tournament. Much of the family is here to cheer our boy on (if you can call a 6'9", 240 lb. rock of a human specimen a boy), and we're all getting a kick out of having someone we love to root for in what would be a fun event even if we didn't have a horse in the race. The whole tournament atmosphere is exciting, and it's always a pleasure to see athletes who have worked their way to the top of their divisions go at it, knowing that this is the moment they have been working towards all year. We all love basketball anyway, and it's even more enjoyable when family and hometown both get a bit of an ego-stroking. Jake plays for the same Winlock Cardinals that Ked and his brother played for 25 years ago. They got to see their nephew help lead that school to its first ever district championship last week, and now we get to see them give it their all at State.

We didn't get to be here for the first couple days of the tourney, so we missed the Cards first two games--one a loss, and the other a victory. The loss means they won't be playing for the State title, but the victory means they're still in it for fifth, so we're happy to still have the chance to watch 'em play and hope to cheer them on to more Winlock wins over the next two days. Ked's caught the fever something fierce, and the only prescription (besides more cowbell) is more basketball!! He's talking about coming back next year, when Jake's off playing college ball, just so he can revel in the joy of high-level high school hoops. We'll see what happens then, but being the sports fan that I am, I won't be the one to discourage him...

This is a basketball flashback for Ked, but it's a bit of a trip down memory lane for me too. When I was in fourth and fifth grade I lived in the Yakima Valley, in a little town called Granger (also represented in this year's tournament). My Mom bought a farm that she had lived on years before, but kept the house in Portland, where my step-dad continued to live, since his job was based in town. We made that four hour drive more times than I can count, and it is always nostalgic for me now, on those few occasions when I travel the same path as an adult. If we take the I-84 route, past The Dalles on the Oregon side of the Columbia Gorge, we pass many a childhood memory. There's Spooky's, the pizza parlor where we always begged Mom to stop if we had time, and were annoyingly persistent about it even if we didn't--still open 35 years later. There's Biggs Junction, the tiny little hamlet that we always called "Dinty's Town" because so many businesses were named after someone with that moniker. I didn't learn its official name until many years into adulthood. In my heart, I still like Dinty's Town better. There is also the climb up towards Goldendale, on the Washington side, stark and bare, and oddly beautiful, although I never appreciated it properly as a child impatient to be home.

Now, of course, there have been some changes, new things built, and old things fallen down along that old familiar path. It's nice to pass that way again, just to glimpse the passage of time in the imagery of the landscape. I have just a few pictures to share with you from the journey. I didn't plan on taking them, but the scenes called out to me. So, here they are... (Click to enlarge.)



This is the Washington side of the Columbia River, after the crossing at Biggs Junction, right before Highway 97 turns north off the road that leads to the Maryhill Museum. I loved the way the shadows from the clouds danced across the windy hills, and the river played in the sunlight that insisted that winter not be gloomy. A little farther down the road the clouds got thicker, and even offered us a little snow to make the drive interesting, but here it was all shining clouds, dancing shadows and the beautiful ribbon of bright blue river.

Those windy hills are taking on a new purpose, as windmills have begun to dot the landscape throughout the region. We thought that seeing these windmills-in-the-making was pretty cool. I couldn't believe the size of those blades that are laying at the base of the tower in the center of the photo. If you take a look at the crane on the left, you can get a sense of how big it is. That crane was tall, and the blades looked awfully large behind it as we drove by. (Definitely click on this one.)

Well, the windmills are new, but here is something definitely old. The field has been plowed, but, unless they are awfully hardy souls, I don't think it was by residents of this house. Needs a bit of repair work, wouldn't you say?

I couldn't resist taking a closer look--with my camera at least. The place just looks so desolate, that for some reason it made me think of the Great Depression, and the Oklahoma Dust-bowl. Hmm, that's not really the place I want my mind going these days. Moving on...

Here's another of the local relics. We called this one The Skeleton Barn. Looks very wild west to me.

Once we got to Yakima we sought out a little color and life. We met Ked's folks at El Mirador for some terrific Mexican food. I know this shot of Ked is a little grainy, but I thought it was such a nice picture of him that I'm willing to put up with the flaws in photography.

Here are Mom and Pop, cheerful after a fine meal, and the recent Winlock victory, ready to head back to the Sun Dome for the last game of the evening. Ked and I were not so ambitious. We headed back to our hotel to check our email, download pictures and get some rest. Ked is snoozing even as I type, and I'll be joining him soon. We've got basketball to watch in the morning. Winlock plays at 11! Go Cards!!

A Technological Ray Of Sunshine

Couldn't we all use some nice, cheerful, sci-fi-quality tech news to remind us that, unlike our profit sharing accounts and 401(k)s, some things are actually moving forward and not backward these days? Some things are, in fact, getting better, stronger, faster and cooler! While financial turmoil shakes the foundations of our economic empires, science is still making amazing progress. Retirement funds and college savings plans may be shrinking, but technology is shrinking, too, both in size and in price, and that is a very good thing. I'll pass you over now to this little piece at Gizmag, which will show you a cutting edge, "affordable" (no amounts given here) almost credit-card-small, flexible electronic touchscreen display. This "electronic paper" uses very little power, is ultra portable, can send or store the information written on it, and can take a serious beating to boot. (Watch the video for evidence of the latter.)

On a side note, this is the kind of thing that gives me hope that the current shaking of our financial foundations doesn't mean the whole building will come crashing down. The things that sparked the general prosperity of the last century--creativity and hard work--haven't crumbled yet (despite the best efforts of our political classes). Humans are an inventive lot, and many of the societal problems we face can be addressed successfully with the right technological advancements. They won't fix the human nature problem--people are still going to do stupid things in the name of blatant self-interest--but they can improve the human condition, feed people, provide clean and affordable energy, extend communication, fight disease, and provide information to the masses. I can't say that I'm at all positive about what the powerful people are doing these days, but the fact that the inventors and scientists keep plugging away is a technological ray of sunshine in a cloudy and difficult time.

I've Got An Idea!

So, I'm on the treadmill, cooling down after a run, thinking random thoughts, when it hits me. Let's fix education in America!! Everyone agrees that our educational system is failing a high percentage of students, right? I read a statistic recently (if I remember correctly, it's from the mayor of Portland, Sam Adams', office) that about 40% of the kids in Portland Public Schools will not graduate high school. I've also read that the rate is even higher in other large cities. Seriously, is that even possible? That is just plain scary. This hits home pretty hard with me. I have two nephews who fell through the cracks and dropped out at the end of their sophomore years, and they are both suffering the consequences of the extremely limited options this lack of education leaves them.

I know a lot of factors influence the effectiveness of a child's education, from home life to culture, to teachers and unions, and many of these factors are not things that government can control. However, some of them are things over which government could have more effective influence than it does. Take teachers, for example. (No, I am not saying that government can control teachers.) There are good ones and there are bad ones. Some are engaged, talented and energetic, and some are putting in their time, tired, and counting the days until retirement. (By the way, I don't think that has anything to do with age. I've had great older teachers and lousy young ones. Some teachers are just better than others.) Is it possible for these gifted teachers to be encouraged to stay, while the less effective are encouraged to find employment that is better suited to their abilities? What, if anything, can or should the federal government do to foster that end? Would the teachers union even brook the slightest interference to their hold on power and seniority? No chance, you say? What if internal pressure gave them no choice?

Here's my proposal: Congress passes a law that says that the households of teachers and teaching assistants will pay no income taxes. None--not even at the state level. I'm not talking just the teachers themselves, but anyone who brings home a paycheck in that household (dependants up to a certain age, say 21). Many teachers salaries are low enough that they probably don't pay federal income tax anyway, but you throw in the income from hubby or wife, and you are talking some significant tax savings. Add on the kids' summer job and they've got a tax free college savings plan!! How's that for incentive for the best and brightest to go into education, and their spouses to be supportive of the endeavor?

Here's the condition: Retention of position is completely dependant upon classroom outcomes. If the kids learn to read, write, do math, etc., then that teacher is kept on the payroll, and off the tax rolls. If they do not, then some of the eager talents waiting in the wings get their shot at improving the situation. How many of the teachers currently in the union would not clamber to have this law enacted? Probably just the bad ones who are currently only protected by seniority from getting the boot. The rest of them would find the reward to be high. This isn't a way to break the union (if the union works for the benefit of its members), but a way to benefit both teachers and students so that everyone comes out ahead. Win, win. The union stays intact, but with purer motives, and the future of American education is dramatically improved.

The cost to the federal coffers would be minimal, but the gain to society could be enormous. We'd have a better educated populace, a well-rewarded class of teachers, and future income for the government based on the fact that an educated country is a productive, creative and revenue-generating country. Imagine the day when teaching would become a coveted position in society, only the gifted could get into teaching programs, and only the best teachers fill our public schools. Imagine.

So what do you think? Pipe dream? Too full of impracticalities? Too naive? (Already been thought and tried? It's new to me, but that doesn't mean much.) I like it, but then I was pretty tired when I thought it up. Maybe it was the endorphins talking... Hey, if this works we could do it with police and firefighters, doctors, nurses; the list goes on. Who would be left to pay taxes you ask? How about all the rest of that well-educated populace that chooses not to go into service sector employment? Better yet, how about only the politicians pay taxes? That would ensure that people had a disincentive to commit politics and we might end up with some purer motives there, as well.

You'd Think We'd Have Had Enough Snow By Now...

...but you'd be wrong!! Yes, we strapped on the snow shoes and tramped about town during the Big Snow Event of 2008. Yes, we sat in the window and watched a gazillion flakes fall. Yes, we had all of our holiday events and deliveries cancelled and juggled and otherwise messed with by the first real winter we've had in years, but we never got to go sledding!! Ked and I needed to go sledding! The town snow only whetted our appetite, making us long for the mountain. So, driven by primal urges to ascend to the heights of Mount Hood and hurl ourselves head first down the slopes, we cancelled what little remained of our holiday schedule and made it happen!! Okay, in all honesty, we had the sledding trip scheduled with friends for weeks before the valley snow flew, but we weren't dissuaded from the trip by the fact we'd been rolling in the white stuff for two weeks. Snow is still fun!! (We are so going skiing soon.)

Before I get to the pictures, let me wish you a very Happy New Year and tell you just a bit about our Christmas. Christmas was, in keeping with the spirit of the winter of 2008, postponed due to weather and family health issues. However, being the flexible group that we are, we simply decided that Christmas would be on December 27th this year, kept the prime rib in the fridge for a couple of extra days and stocked up on a little extra eggnog to get us through 'til the feast could begin. This Christmas was the first time since I was a toddler that all of my sisters and I had been together with my mom for Christmas, so we wanted to go all out to make it special. Along with the absolutely divine prime rib, I made Yorkshire pudding, creamed spinach, sweet potato casserole (a Tasina and Sioux Lady recipe-to-die-for), and as a special treat, Ked whipped up some mocha pots de creme--a coffee and chocolate custard, which was impossibly good. It all turned out wonderfully, in fact. I was quite relieved. I had never made prime rib and Yorkshire pudding before, but had a couple of splendid recipes, and it all came off without a hitch. The family was also extremely well-behaved for the occasion--another blessing for which to be thankful! We had a wonderful family celebration, well worth the delay and fuss, and digging out of cars which the snow engendered. I hope yours was equally lovely. On to the pics... (As usual, click on the pictures to make 'em bigger.)


We were feeling a trifle unsure when we arrived at the trail-head to find a foot of unpacked snow in the parking lot, and not another car in sight!! It was snowing hard, in a pretty stiff wind, and we weren't entirely certain that everyone else who stayed away didn't have the right idea. Mind you, we weren't averse to having the mountain to ourselves, just not particularly interested in getting stranded or frozen. Our Expedition handled the Great Portland Snow-In Of '08 like a champ, though, so we hooked on the ever-useful snowshoes and tramped on up the hill, leaving the suv all on its lonesome.

We trudged down the trail and crested the sledding hill just about the time the weather decided to completely change her tune. By the time we had gotten settled in for a slide or two, it turned into a rather pleasant day. The sky even flashed a bit of blue every now and then, just to keep us cheerful! Our friend (I'll call her M until she tells me she can have at least a first name here on the blog) provided the blue, in her cap, the rest of the time.

Girlie here found going down the hill a breeze. Coming up was something more of a challenge! The man in the background was a stranger we met when some other people finally decided that the weather had turned about for keeps. He and his pregnant wife, and another couple, came wading through the snow--midway up their thighs at points--only to arrive at this very tempting hill with no way to slide down it. Ked and I were back at the car getting the camera at the time, so our friends loaned the unprepared ones our sleds for a few rides. Mom-to-be called it baby's first sled ride! It was funny; in chatting with her a bit, we discovered she's a nurse in the cancer ward where my mom has been getting treatments for the last several weeks. I'm heading there tomorrow with Mom for her next round of platelets. I wonder if we'll see her again... Wouldn't that be an odd turn of events?

The boy had a blast from the get-go. Last year when we did this he wasn't as brave as this time around, or as sensible. He kept taking off his gloves and felt the cold something fierce. This year's outing saw him a little wiser, and a little warmer, too. The gloves stayed on. The hat found itself straying from its moorings now and then, but this didn't seem to dampen his spirits, even if it did dampen his hair a bit.

Ked was in fine humor, too, and even a tumble or two didn't wipe the smile from his twice-bespectacled face.

...and there was, indeed, a tumble or two. Even the snowshoes couldn't keep us upright part of the time. The snow was so deep and unevenly packed that what seemed like solid ground occasionally and unpredictably wasn't. I fell at one point, put my hands out to steady myself, and ended up with my arms buried up to my armpits! Made for a tricky landing. My face came an inch or so from intimate acquaintance with the powder, and getting out of the situation took some careful maneuvering. I couldn't help but think what it would be like to be buried, even temporarily, in the snow. It was actually a little scary--just a very little.

Girlie isn't scared here, just cold and tired of being so. If only we could have convinced her to stop sitting in the snow and chomping it down like a snow cone in August...

This one didn't even bother reaching down to scoop his snow cone up off the ground. He just waited until enough ice had gathered near his chin and started licking.

How's this for bringing color to a stark white world? All the primaries, and even a few secondary shades made it onto a few square yards of mountain. Those bright, rosy little faces are the nicest part of the picture, though, wouldn't you say?

Speaking of bright, rosy little faces, here's our friend "S" hiding his as usual. S and I have an ongoing ritual, which involves me wielding my ubiquitous camera, and him ducking behind whatever is convenient to avoid it. It's a fun little game we play. At least I caught his eyes this time. Usually it's not much more than an ear or a chin.

Ked's not nearly so camera shy as S is, as long as he can be a goofball! His neck was hurting from a hard smack on the ground by this point, but you'd never know it from pictorial evidence!

Can't get much cuter than this! A little hot cocoa was all it took to melt all that snow that Girlie had consumed, and warm her up from the inside. See the glow?

Once we made it down off the mountain we spent some time in the evening playing with M&S's family Christmas present. We had a great time golfing and boxing and playing tennis with their new Wii. I'll tell you, though, that boxing'll wear you out! I couldn't wait for round three to be over!! Isn't M looking strong and stylish, though? I can't decide whether she looks more like a boxer, or a contestant on American Idol.

The competition got pretty heated. When M started directing her controller toward S, instead of the TV sensor, we could tell things were getting serious!

Can you guess who won?

Eventually the kids took over and we finished off the evening, all of us worn out and ready for a rest from all our trudging in the snow and punching each other's lights out. A couple days later we tried Wii bowling. Now that was right up my alley!! Much less of a fatigue factor with bowling, and the beauty of doing it with Wii is that you don't have to rent the shoes. Heck, next time I think I'll try it without shoes!!

So there you have the story of our quest for snow, after the snow. It was very satisfying. The weather reports are saying we may be getting a little more snowfall here in town in the coming few days. Apparently this oddly winterish winter continues. I'll spare you the photos if it comes. You've got to be tired of the snow by now, even if I'm not. They're also talking flooding, though. Can't promise that I won't show you pictures of that...

Happy New Year to you, wherever you may be.

Going With The Flow

This has been the most unexpected Christmas season. Almost everything we had planned for the last two weeks was cancelled due to weather, and now even Christmas itself has been rescheduled for many in the Portland area. My family will now be gathering on December 27th for feast and frolic, partly due to snow and partly due to a Christmas Day doctor's appointment that my mom couldn't avoid. We're all just going with the flow around here, and seeing where the days take us. They are handing us some surprises.

Having all our plans cancelled hasn't turned out to be all that bad. We have had time to truly relax for the first time in months, and playing in the snow right outside our door has been a treat. We've gone on several snowshoe outings with very little time and effort, and no gasoline used at all to go find the powder!! Ked got to start putting together my new table saw that he got me for Christmas, and the one thing we payed money for this holiday season was not cancelled--the weather let up enough to let us go see the Oregon Ballet Theater perform The Nutcracker. We went with some dear friends, and then all came back to our house for a quick change of clothes and a nice long late-night stroll in the snow. Perfect.

That was, as I mentioned, just about the only event that came off as planned. Not a single other day was what we had put on the calendar. (It's a good thing I keep my calendar on the computer, or it would be nothing but a scribbled out mess!) We spent one whole day wrapping and distributing gifts for Angel Tree (a really cool organization), because hardly anyone else could get out of their driveways! We spent another on a medical errand of sorts. A third saw us driving friends to the airport so they could escape to warmer climes. All of these days had other plans that weren't meant to be, but it has been quite a peaceful week despite all this. We have learned to embrace the changes, and even be glad of the opportunities they have brought.

True to form, our Christmas Eve plans also proved a challenge, and any other year we would have been upset, but this year is truly special. We will reschedule the plans that got cancelled, and because they fell through we ended up having a lovely Christmas serendipity. Not far into the evening, Ked and I heard a faint hint of Christmas music which we knew wasn't coming from inside our house. The music grew louder and we went to the window to see what was afoot. We saw our next-door neighbor had brought a portable fire-pit into his front yard, and soon he had a merry blaze going. He had Neil Diamond singing Christmas songs from his car stereo, and the open door allowed the music to fill the street. Ked and I wandered out to enjoy the show and then our neighbor invited us down to share the fire and see what other intrepid souls would poke their heads out of their doors to join us.

Two other couples decided to stand in ten inches of snow and brave the light rain (yes, for the first time in two weeks it decided to rain. How's that for ornery weather?), and we all had a lovely time getting warm by the fire and passing around fresh-baked cookies and my husband's famous homemade butter almond toffee. We got to meet some new folks we hadn't met before, a couple up from San Francisco who moved in not too long ago--hilariously enough, they moved here for the weather!! We had a simply lovely time connecting with the people who live closest to us, and I'm so glad it happened that way. I asked our "hosts" if this was an annual tradition that we always missed because we're never home on Christmas Eve, and he said no, that they hadn't been home on that night themselves in 27 years!! They just thought that if we were all going to be stranded together, we might as well enjoy each other's company. Isn't that a nice neighborly attitude? I hope that this becomes our default tradition--whoever is around on Christmas Eve shares a fire and some cookies, preferably in the snow.

For your holiday enjoyment, I wanted to share some pics-about-town that were taken all over the city this week. Some are personal. Some I just thought were pretty. (Click on them to enlarge.)



My friend Su has this wonderful marsh/pond behind her house, and she's always taking these amazing wildlife photos. Here's one she snapped of an egret--I think it's safe to call it a snowy egret at this point, even if it's not!!

I don't think she'll be dining al fresco anytime soon. Unless she wants a nice big snow cone, that is. Anybody have any cherry syrup?

After we finished making our Angel Tree deliveries, the friends who were part of our delivery crew had a few more errands of mercy to perform. Ked just loves to drive in the snow, so we were off!! They all showed great patience for me, letting me stop frequently to take pictures of scenes that I thought were pretty. I thought this picture fit that description.

Here are our patient friends. She didn't mind me stopping for picture-taking, partly because she's a shutterbug herself, and one of the most artistic people I know. It was nice to have such cheerful company on our travels that day.

I loved this spot of color in an almost endlessly white world. I do think snow is gorgeous and magical, but I have to admit that it can be rather monochromatic.

On the way home we drove down Peacock Lane, a local landmark this time of year. There are two densely packed blocks where every home is decorated and aglow. It has been this way every Christmas as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, it was too early in the evening for every house to be lit (we got there 20 minutes too soon), but a few of them were prepared for eager visitors who jumped the gun, so we still got to see some pretties.

On one of our snowshoe treks, Ked and I noticed this fallen tree in the park blocks near our home. It's hard to tell with no people in the shot to give it perspective, but that's a fully grown tree just toppled over like it gave up on life. When we looked more closely we saw that, even though it had significant girth, the roots were extremely shallow. I don't know if that is common to this type of tree, but if it is, it explains the several other nearby trees of this type that have lay down and died in our near-annual ice storms. Perhaps the park planners ought to reconsider their tree of choice...

We went out yesterday, after the heaviest snowfall of the week, and walked around the golf course--snowshoe clad, of course. We saw lots of other people on cross country skis and sleds. One family even had a stroller with a ski attachment. They said they had never gotten to use it before, but that it was proving itself worth the purchase. After this week we feel the same way about our SUV. Guilt us all you want about our gas guzzler, but when people needed a ride this week, we were the ones they called.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again--Snow is fun!!

As I said, snow is fun, but I must admit that I chose a terrible week to loan out my ski pants!

Today we got what is likely to be our last blast of snow from this record-setting year. The series of storms decided to go out with a bang this morning, and we got the biggest flakes and most beautiful snowfall yet. Needless to say, we wandered outside, to take pictures!

Ked was thirsty, so he took a taste of what libations the sky had to offer.

I just stood outside this morning being happy in the snow--happy that this unusual end-of-the-year foray into winter has given Ked and me so many gifts. It's made us slow down and enjoy the moment. It's given us the opportunity to help people, and meet our neighbors. It's helped us remember that Christmas isn't about the date we celebrate, or the traditions we keep, but about Jesus, and the people that He came to Earth to love and give His life to save. I'm still looking forward to celebrating with my family this Saturday, but I'm looking forward to it with more peace and less agenda than I've had for many a Christmas. That is a gift indeed.

A Blindingly White Christmas

Did Al Gore come to the Pacific Northwest? They say that wherever he shows up to give one of his talks on global warming the temperature drops to unusual lows, but this is taking the Gore Effect to new extremes (especially if he doesn't actually happen to be here). Talk about power. We have had winter in Portland, honest-to-goodness winter for over a week, and that just doesn't happen here before Christmas without some dramatic intervention from a higher power, like God graciously answering "yes" to the prayers of kids and teachers who want a snow day, or the aforementioned global weather czar making an appearance to prove to the already convinced that global warming is going to ruin the planet. I lean toward the Almighty myself, but some might attribute more power to the former Vice President.

In any case, every day for the last three or four days the weather prognosticators have been assuring us that one more band of moisture was coming through that would raise temperatures above freezing and turn off the snow showers, but every day the cold front from the east defeats the wet warm front from the west, and the snow continues to fall. We did get a brief interval of freezing rain (about a quarter of an inch) a couple times, but those sheets have simply gotten layered between the more flaky kind of crystallized water to give the surface a little crunch when we walk through it.

So, I got my wish. Snow. Lots and lots of gorgeous now. I have now had six planned events cancelled by the weather, including the Christmas service and turkey dinner at church yesterday. That's disappointing. However, we've rescheduled them for next week, so hopefully we get to make the church events up, and in the meantime we get a winter adventure! The big event of the week is still coming, of course. I do hope Christmas comes off as planned. All of my Mom's children will be together for the first time ever. The last time it happened I was a toddler, so tack forty plus years on to that and it pretty much qualifies as having never happened. I was basically a senseless, thankless oyster at the time, so I don't really count it as a complete family moment. (MAJOR bonus point to anyone who gets the oyster reference and can tell me what movie it's from.)

At some point today, Ked and I are supposed to go to the butcher's and pick up the prime rib we ordered for Christmas dinner with the family. The shop is about a mile away, so we have decided to strap on the snowshoes and a backpack, and trek there on foot. Why not!? People pay money for the chance to get a good workout in the snow, and we've been out walking in it several times already. The difference today is that there's LOTS more of it, so the snowshoes will come in for use. That just makes the adventure all the more adventurous!! We can't let this opportunity for a winter-gym-at-our-doorstep go to waste! Other people agree with me, too. So far today I have seen dads pulling sleds, neighbors wielding snow shovels, and one intrepid soul who lives across the street gliding up our hill on cross-country skis. That last one took me by surprise, to be honest. It's just not something you see here in the rain zone. I wonder if we'll cause the same reaction for someone else when they see us trudging by wearing snowshoes? Heh.


Here's Ked out in back by our pear tree. If you look closely, you can just see the top edge of a retaining wall behind him and to the left. That's a raised bed that stands about 18 inches high. The whole back yard is one giant snow drift.

These bushes across the street are feeling the weight of the ice layers. A few of the trees are looking pretty top-heavy these days as well.

Remember how in an earlier post I said I'd never driven in snow? This would probably be the perfect opportunity to learn, if we wanted to dig the car out of the snowdrift that is... That retaining wall is three feet high.

In my last post I noted that my house was wearing a light white winter jacket, and that it needed more clothing. Well, I'd say now that it dressed up for the holidays! That little tree is wearing a full tree-skirt. Heck, I'd call it a ball gown at this point!!

Ked got out soon after I snapped that last photo and cleared the stairs and walkway a bit for the mailman. That's always a risk here in Portland, because snow often turns to freezing rain (at least in our part of town, which is quite near the the Columbia Gorge), and you'd much rather have freezing rain over snow than over bare steps and pavement. Trust me on this one. You can stomp your way through crunchy snow much better than you can keep your balance on a sidewalk ice skating rink. Hope this choice pans out. They're calling for more snow, and less freezing rain in the forecast, but you never know here in the northern Willamette Valley. We may only get winter once every three or ten years, but when we do, anything can happen...

Sittin' In The Window... Feeding My Soul

I'm watching the snow fall. Can't tell you how much this ministers to me, or why. It just does. I can so easily get lost in the flakes as they drift to the ground. Right now it's the kind of snow I've been waiting for all week. Up until now, it's been icy, hard, cold, windy snow, with little tiny pellets blowing like fog across the world, only to vanish in the wind. Today it's the gentle kind of snow that comes to the earth with a kiss and nestles down in soft contentment. It's beautiful. I hope it lasts a while. "More, more," she cried.


Here's my house, wearing just a thin white winter jacket. It needs a heavier coat, don't you think?

Here's the view across the street. I've always thought that Snow White should live in this house and stand on that little balcony singing. Today, it's even more appropriate.

My neighborhood has lots of trees that look pretty all year round, but even more so when they're dressed in white. Of course,, in my opinion, even the power lines look almost pretty when they're covered in snow. I'm awfully easy to please when the snow is falling.

If you're in the neighborhood, I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am.

Getting In The Spirit

It snowed today!! It wasn't the 4-8 inches they promised us for days, and the wind is blowing a lot of it away, and there's a layer of ice underneath it which is going to be there long after the snow has disappeared, but It Snowed Today!! Snow, snow, snow, lovely snow. In Portland. In December. Yay.

This blog has turned into more of a personal memory journal than anything else. I suppose I ought to remove the header that makes mention of politics and science and the like, but I haven't gotten around to it, and besides, you never know when I might get the whim to write something legit, but until then I hope you'll indulge me while I get in the Christmas spirit.

We were supposed to go to a party this afternoon, but stayed home because Ked is sick, and due to the general paucity of snow in the Portland Metro area, I have never actually driven in really bad weather. (I'd say ice and 23 degrees qualifies as bad weather. You can call me a wimp if you live in the Midwest or Northeast, but there it is.) Some day I need to learn, but it's not going to be while driving out to Oregon City by myself, leaving my husband home alone sneezing. I think a better plan would be going up with a healthy Ked to some mountain parking lot some day. I do not have a current death wish.

Since we had the unexpected time at home, and the inspirational white stuff, I took the opportunity to put up and decorate our Christmas tree. I offer it here for your perusal.


I went with a purple and gold theme this year--something you may or may not be able to tell from the photo above. (Click on the picture to get a better look.) I tried to take a picture that captured the feel of it more than the exact form. Not sure how that worked, but I gave it my best shot. I discovered it's hard to take a picture of a lighted tree. Flash washes it out. No flash makes it blurry or grainy. Oh well. It's the thought that counts, right?

Speaking of Christmas thoughts--If you are travelling for the holidays, stay safe and have a lovely trip. If you are sticking close to home, be warm and comfortably cheerful. Wherever you will be, I wish you a very joyous Christmas and a New Year full of Christ's blessings and love. Merry Christmas.

Sunset

I had to share last night's sunset with you. It was the kind of sky that makes you wish you weren't in the city, with rooftops and power lines, but out in an open field with just distant hills and maybe an oak tree or two. Simply glorious. I couldn't keep that sky to myself. You needed to see it too. (Maybe you did see it, if you're local, in which case it was a pleasure watching the sunset with you.)

Ked and I came home late in the afternoon from my mom's house with a load of her belongings to store in our garage. (She's trying to put some things in order, and we've been doing our best to help.) Anyway, I noticed as we pulled into the driveway how pretty the clouds were, with a beautiful glow that came from just the right amount of clouds meeting just the right angle of sun. They were dark in the back, but all lit up bright white where they faced the golden orb. (Bonus points if you know the movie quote.) I couldn't resist getting out my camera, because you just don't see clouds like that every day, and I'd love to learn to paint them. I'm a cameraholic anyway, so it's no surprise that I merrily started snapping pictures as soon as the car slowed enough for the camera to focus.

Once I finished click-clicking, and Ked finished backing the utility trailer into the driveway, we got to work, pulling stuff from the trailer and rearranging the garage space to accommodate the new additions. (We had to work around that as-yet-unassembled saw that I told you about last week. It's smack in the middle of the garage claiming preeminence.) Being busy, I wasn't really thinking about the sky anymore, just concentrating on the task at hand, but about half an hour after we got into the job I finally managed to look up again to where the sun was now going down. What I saw took my breath away. Hope you like it too. (Click to enlarge.)


This really doesn't do the glowy clouds justice. Although I want to learn to paint them, clearly I have not learned how to photograph them yet. (Maybe painting will be easier!! Well, okay, probably not.)

This is what I saw when I turned my focus upward for the second time. The clouds had been filling in for that half hour that we spent playing pack mule. While we weren't looking, God filled half the sky with this amazing color.

I walked around the neighborhood a bit to get a better view, and the clouds kept thickening while the fire spread.

I love this picture. Eventually the world above deepened to this dramatic grey-blue with rose-tinged edges. So beautiful. I want to live in those clouds--or at least be able to paint them!